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CHARACTER 
EDUCATION 
METHODS 



THE IOWA PLAN 

$20,000 AWARD 

1922 



Character Education Institution 
Chevy Chase, Washington, D. C. 



CHARACTER 
EDUCATION 
METHODS 



THE IOWA PLAN 

$20,000 AWARD 

1922 



Character Education Institution 
Chevy Chase, Washington-, D, C. 



C^AiA^ 






NATIONAL CAPITAL PRESS, INC., WASHINQTON, D. C. 



404426 
'30 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction iii 

I. Foundation Principles 1 

II. The Goal 6 

A. The Sort of Person at whom the School Aims. 

B. Specific Lines of Preparation. 

III. The Organization and Control of the School 9 

A. The School as a Democratic Community. 

B. Student Participation. 

C. Government, Discipline and Punishment. 

IV. Some Ways of Preserving, Directing and Exercising the Entire 
Integrity of the Child 17 

A. Noble Deeds. 

B. Socialized Recitation. 

C. The Project Method. 

V. Fitting the Methods and Materials to the Child's Development 25 
VI. A Moral Curriculum with a Progressive Plan, a Drive, and 

a Goal 29 

VII. Moving Progressively Toward the Objective ZZ 

A. Civic Relations. 

B. Life in th€ Family. 

VIII. The Curriculum by Years 36 

IX. Measurements of Progress and Attainment 38 

X. The Teacher and Her Preparation 41 

XL Cooperating Agencies 43 

XII. Conclusion 45 



IV CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

The restriction of interest to public school methods does not mean 
that the Donor and the members of the Institution do not sympathize 
with the great service which private and church schools render the 
Nation, but it does mean that they appreciate the fact that the public 
school is the only public expression of direct interest on the part of 
all the people of the Nation in the preparation of the Nation's boys and 
girls for their life as citizens of the republic and of the states of which 
it is composed. 

In all fields of education, save that of religious education, which is 
assigned to the churches (each church furnishing in its own way the 
religious sanctions for conduct to its own children), the public schools 
should strive to be complete in their service; but the national system 
of public education is not now complete, because, while intellectual 
education is fairly well developed, vocational and physical education 
are only partly provided, and character education on human motives, 
covering the wisdom of human experience, although recognized by 
school authorities and by parents as the supremely important phase of 
public education, is undeveloped and often neglected. 

The right to compete was limited. For the purpose of this research 
and competition there was formed in most of the states of the United 
States of North America a group of research educators to be designated 
as "Character Education Collaborators," not to exceed nine in number. 
All other persons interested were privileged to cooperate by means of 
advice. 

Keen, discerning, thorough, constructive thinking is the highest kind 
of human action. "Group thinking" of this character, by people organized 
to think together, which utilizes the best insight of each member of the 
group, is the highest form of this highest kind of human action. This 
form of thinking is necessary when an effort is made to solve the 
problems of character education of children, because the facts of the 
moral life of children are hidden away in personal memory. A com- 
pilation or accumulation of the memories of childhood and of observations 
is essential to an adequate basis for thinking out the general principles of 
character education. 

In order to give the 432 collaborators in this research a good start 
in their thinking, another offer was made by "The Donor," namely, 
that he would pay for the compilation of a volume of extracts from 
educational literature having a bearing on character education. One copy 
of this volume was for the chairman of research in each state, and 
at the close of the year was deposited as a gift in the office of the state 
commissioner or superintendent of education. The fifty extra copies 
were put on loan to collaborators during the research, and will be loaned 
now to any educator who may be making a special study of principles 
of character education. This volume contains six hundred pages of 
condensed extracts, done under the editorship of Dr. Harris L. Latham, 
and is called "The Donor's Library on Character Education, Volume I." 
Only one hundred copies could be printed, and the cost of editorial work 
and printing w^as about $5,000. 

The Executive Committee suggested to the collaborators that their 
study of the problems of character education of children be as com- 
plete and thorough as possible so that they would be likely to discover 
and combine in their plans all the elements essential to success in 
character education. A full explanation of the moral ideas to be in- 
culcated was not necessary, because this was the problem of the National 
$5,000 Morality Codes Competition, 1916-1917. Methods of character 
education in their application to kindergarten, elementary school, junior 
and advanced high schools, and the preparation of teachers for character 
education were to be included in the '■esearches of the collaborators. 



INTERSTATE RESEARCH V 

The following are typical of the questions which it was proper for them 
to consider in preparation for their conclusions as to the best methods 
of character education. 

How to get children to understand and appreciate the wisdom of 
moral experience? How to develop personal convictions in matters of 
morality in the minds of the children themselves, and the will to live 
up to these convictions? How to correlate school and home life so as 
to influence character development together? What character education 
should be given teachers themselves as a preparation for personal in- 
fluence over character development of children? How shall teachers be 
enlightened as to the moral ideas to be inculcated, and how trained to 
efficiency in the use of methods of character education? 

In each state the right of selection of research collaborators was 
granted to a local state "Committee of Selection" composed of the state 
superintendent (unless he accepted appointment as chairman of the collab- 
orators, in which case a substitute was found among the superintendents 
of the state) the president of a university or college and a person of gen- 
eral influence, usually a woman. 

In the appointment of collaborators no inquiry was made as to 
religious beliefs, it being the position of the research that religious 
education is assigned to the churches and private schools by the National 
Constitution and by established opinion, and that discussion of religious 
doctrines by public school teachers is undesirable and forbidden. 

The plans as a whole were to be submitted in such shape and organiza- 
tion of thought as was believed by the authors suitable for presentation to 
superintendents of schools and boards of education desiring assistance in 
determining what system of character education shall be used in their 
schools. . 

The time allowed was from October 1, 1919, to February 22, Wash- 
ington's Birthday, 1921. Each group of contestants sent their plan 
direct by registered mail in five copies, typewritten, on paper free from 
any markings, to an outsider. Principal Calvert K. Mellen, Lafayette 
High School, Buffalo, New York (who had been selected by the Donor 
to receive plans), without name attached or any mark to indicate the 
authors, accompanied by a letter giving names and addresses of the 
authors. Said outsider attached a number, the same number, to both 
letter and each copy of the plan submitted, and forwarded three copies 
of each plan to the Executive Committee of the Institution and one copy 
to the Donor, retaining the authors' letter, numbered, and one cop5 
of their plan having the same number. Each judge designated by 
number the three plans which he considered the very best of those 
submitted, and sent the numbers to the said Executive Committee, who 
in turn informed all judges of the numbers of plans thus receiving 
special approval. The judges on receiving this list of commended plans, 
by number, further compared these commended plans, and each judge 
voted for a first choice and also for a second choice, each graded on a 
scale of ten, among the plans resubmitted, and the prize was awarded 
the plan having the highest total grade. Said outsider was then informed 
of the number of the plan receiving the award and notified the Donor 
of the names and addresses of the successful contestants. 

It was prescribe"d that the board of judges should be selected from 
the members of the Character Education Institution. Although most of 
the states organized collaborators, only twenty-six succeeded in working 
out plans for submission in the competition for the award. In order 
to secure judges without personal state interest, invitations to the board 
of judges were confined to those states failing to submit plans. The 
work involved in being a judge was enormous, since the aggregate for 
the twenty-six state plans was over two thousand pages. The quality 



VI CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

of many of the plans was such as to make it difficult to decide to which 
plan to award the $20,000. The personnel of the board of judges was 
as follows: 

State Superintendent Thomas E. Finegan, of Pennsylvania, 
State Superintendent W. F. Bond, of Mississippi, 
State Commissioner A. B. Meredith, of Connecticut. 

The award of the judges was to methods plan number 9, which was 
certified by the said outsider as submitted from the state of Iowa. 
The names of the Iowa Committee of Selection were: 

State Superintendent Albert M. Deyoe, and later 
State Superintendent P. E. McClenahan, 
Department of Public Instruction, 
Des Moines. 
President Walter A. Jessup, 
State University of Iowa, 
Iowa City. 
Hon. John Hamill, 
Attorney at Law, 
Britt. 

Those of the research collaborators winning the award were: 

Chairman Edwin D. Starbuck, Ph.D., 
Professor of Philosophy, 
^ University of Iowa, Iowa City. 

Superintendent H. E. Blackmar, Ph.D., 
Public Schools, 
Ottumwa. 
President C. P. Colegrove, Sc. D., LL.D., 
Upper Iowa University, 
Fayette. 
Professor Fred D. Cram, A.M., 

Extension, State Teachers' College, 
Cedar Falls. 
Professor A. C. Fuller, Jr., A.B., 
Extension, State Teachers' College, 
Cedar Falls. 
Professor Ernest Horn, Ph.D., 
Educatioii, University of Iowa, 
Iowa City. 
Professor Herbert Martin, Ph.D., 
Philosophy, Drake University, 
Des Moines. 
Superintendent A. T. Hukill, 
Public Schools, 
Waterloo. 
Professor J. D. Stoops, Ph.D., 
Philosophy, Grinnell College, 
Grinnell. 

The chairman received $4,000 and each collaborator received $2,000 
as the individual award. 

Professor Edwin D. Starbuck, chairman of the Iowa Collaborators, 
says that they began with committee meetings for clearing their thought 
about the entire field. He himself as chairman acted as leader in the 
constructive work, and the others were advisers and counselors. Three 
of the collaborators mnde contributions worthy of special recognition. 
Superintendent Blackmar turned his school into a laboratory and tried 



INTERSTATE RESEARCH Vll 

out and perfected the "Golden Deeds" book, originated by Superintendent 
M. A. Cassidy, of Lexington, Kentucky, which forms a part of Chapter 
IV. Professor Ernest Horn helped especially to formulate the section 
of Chapter IV on the socialized recitation and the project method of 
teaching. Professor Herbert Martin worked out Chapter XI on co- 
operating agencies. Miss Ethel R. Golden assisted the collaborators 
by devising a character education course of study, and Miss Margaret 
Starbuck acted as general secretary and worked on a bibliography. Mr. 
George Mendenhall, who had been working as a university graduate 
student on the problem of character rating, was largely responsible for 
Chapter IX on self-measurement. Miss Maude Brown furnished valuable 
suggestions on health projects. Many business houses were generous 
in the gift or loan of their books and devices for use in bibliographical 
work. 

Five thousand copies of this Iowa Plan for Character Education in 
Public Schools are being published at the expense of the Donor for free 
distribution in the United States and abroad, as a means of securing 
letters of criticism and advice from educators and others toward the 
maturing of opinion as to the best methods of character education in 
public schools, and preliminary to extensive experiments. All the think- 
ing that seems of importance in all the other plans submitted will be 
given most serious attention in these experiments in verification of the 
results of this research. The Institution will loan copies of these plans 
to those who want them for study, and will loan copies of the Iowa Plan 
on request. 

This "Methods Research" was started under the auspices of the 
"National Institution for Moral Instruction," but a reincorporation was 
accomplished on February 2, 1922, 'under the broader title of the "Char- 
acter Education Institution." The Executive Committee of Washington, 
D. C, under which the research was put through, included as members, 

Mr. Milton Fairchild, Chairman. 

Dr. Philander P. Claxton, U. S. Commissioner of Education. 

Dr. Willard S. Small, U. S. Bureau of Education. 

Dean Willialn C. Ruediger, Teachers College, George Washington Univ. 

Miss Margaret Bell Merrill, Teacher in Western High School. 

The board of trustees of the Character Education Institution is com- 
posed of the following officials, each to act during his or her term of 
office. 

Commissioner John j. Tigert and Dr. Willard S. Small of the U. S. 
Bureau of Education; Secretary Florence V. Watkins, National Congress 
of Mothers ; Dean C. E. Seashore, National Research Council ; Dean 
Wm. C. Ruediger, School of Education, George Washington University; 
Superintendent Frank W. Ballou and Principal Allan Davis, Washington 
Public Schools; Milton Fairchild, Chairman of Board of Trustees and 
of the Institution. State Commissioners and State Superintendents oi 
Education in various states, or their nominees, and a few other educators 
at large are the members of the corporation, which is for educational 
work in the field of character education as a service to the schools of all 
the states and foreign countries. 



CHAPTER I 

THE IOWA PLAN 
A. Foundation Principles 

I. HAVE A GOAL 

Character education must keep before parents and instructors an end 
as distinct as that before a traveler virho would take a journey or a 
factory manager vi^ho would turn out a finished product or an artist 
who would create a work of art. It should be consciously purposeful, 
not haphazard. The methods herein outHned move towards a definite goal. 

II. MEASURE THE PROGRESS AND THE PRODUCT 

The flower of moral culture eludes scales and measuring sticks. But 
there are fundamental attitudes that are as measurable as are the "points" 
in stock judging, or the "skills" in arithmetic, writing and music. Char- 
acter development promises to be able to know where it is going and 
what progress it is making. This outline presents a fairly successful 
scale for character-rating. 

III. THE END IS PERSONAL 

The school is made for the child and not the child for the school. 
The kingdom of Character Education is in the hearts, minds, and muscles 
of children, not in general precepts or abstract principles. Cultivate 
persons who live gracefully and helpfully, not virtues that seem desirable. 
The virtues are the flowers of the good life. Its roots, trunk, twigs, 
and fruits are made out of deeds, including thought-deeds. 

IV. THE END IS SOCIAL 

Organize the school as a whole and in every part as a democratic 

community of persons. "To socialize, to citizenize and to moralize are 

the same." Societies and democracies of the future will be safe and 

wholesome if the thoughts, sympathies and activities of children are 
socially re-centered. 

v. THE END IS PRACTICAL 

The moral person is not simply abstractly good but good for something. 
He is part of a busy, constructive, creative program. He works, plays, 
studies, loves and worships. The center of gravity of moral values has 
shifted once and for all and finally away from the favored ones of wealth 
and prestige whose virtues are just humanity's adornments, to the mass of 
busy, common folk who are doing the work of the world. The virtues 
are not treasures to be won but attitudes towards the actual situations 
men and women have to face. Not virtue for virtue's sake but Tightness 
and righteousness for life's sake — the growing, self -realizing life of 
individuals and societies. 

VI. THE SURE FOUNDATIONS OF CHARACTER LIE IN CONDUCT 

The school throughout must be a personally acquiring, socially adjust- 
ing, mutually achieving society, not a conversation club or a lecture bureau. 
Its problems must be real. One actual ethical situation met and solved is 
worth more to the child than a dozen imaginary moral questions selected 
as topics of discussion. Practice the good life rather than entertain 
thoughts about it. 



c- CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

VII. VITALIZE CONDUCT THROUGH THE SYMPATHIES 

The likes, the desires, the longings, the loves are springs of action. 
Build up bodies of specific dislikes and hatreds of ugliness in conduct and 
sets of tastes and prejudices in favor of that which is clean, kindly, 
courageous, noble. The moral feelings should be instruments of the real 
self in the act of meeting actual situations. 

VIII. FURNISH THE MIND RICHLY WITH IMAGERY AND SYMBOLS OF 
RIGHT LIVING 

Conduct moves surely in the direction of its dominant imagery. Its 
mental pictures are its pillar of cloud and pillar of fire. See that the 
mind of every child is attracted to the best pieces of art; is entangled in 
the plot of wholesome novels, plays and movies ; is resonant with proverbs, 
poetry, precepts and wise sayings ; is vibrant with the rhythm and 
melody of the best music ; is inspired with admiration of great personalities 
and is self -hypnotized by the thought of noble deeds. Every false brooding 
is the link of a prisoner's chain or the stone of a prison wall. A clean 
imagination is the true deliverer. An ideal is a conscious image made 
personal. 

IX. DEVELOP PROGRESSIVE SKILL IN MORAL THOUGHTFULNESS 

During the early years reduce self-conscious goodness and reasoned 
conduct to a minimum. Don't tempt the child to analyze the moral life 
untilv he has one : first, conduct ; then the sympathies ; next, the imagination, 
and finally, reasoned behavior. Cultivate the power, on occasion, to face 
real moral situations thoughtfully, to criticise conduct, to form clear and 
accurate judgments of right behavior, to organize the feelings into higher 
ethical sentiments, to attain conscious self-control and to help direct wisely 
the life of the group. 

X. TRANSLATE DUTY INTO BEAUTY 

Like all worth-while games the game of living is difficult to learn. 
The sign of mastery is joy in the performance. Cultivate habits of living 
out gracefully the clean and kindly life. The good character is full of 
harmony within and without, like the harmony of music. The good in 
character is like the good in manners but more. Transform sheer duty 
into an impelling and inviting sense of beauty. 

XI. FAMILIARIZE CHILDREN WITH THE BEST OF THE RACIAL TRADITIONS 

The life of humanity is a sort of racial organism with unitary being. 
Its future is created out of its past. The children are its living, growing 
present. Their characters will be whole and sound in proportion as they 
draw from the total heritage. They need to live over again some of its 
myth and legend, its poetry and drama, its work and play, its customs 
and history. They need to learn its wisdom, respect its great personalities 
and revere its ideals. 

XII. AWAKEN LOYALTY TO A CAUSE 

Character is a by-product of a worthy cause made personal. The 
cause should usually be a real situation, always capable of being carried 
over into a completed and alleviating thought or act, not an imaginary 
one that ends in a sentiment. It must _ always be within the child's 
grasp — a flower to a sick child, help to a tired mother, food to a famine- 
stricken country, completion of a school project. It should summon the 
child's own discriminating thought and effort and stand out as an end 



FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES J 

desired and sought after. Character consists in thoughtful selection of a 
cause together with personal loyalty to that cause. 

XIII. STIMULATE THE SPIRIT OF REVERENCE 

Feel after, with the child, the Life that is more than meat, the Truth 
that is more than fact, the Law that is more than event. Don't preach; 
don't pretend. Be simple, direct, genuine. Admiration of comely objects 
is schooling in the highest act of worship. Respect for laws of nature 
and of the state are elements in the truest reverence. To feel the fascina- 
tion of the quest for fuller knowledge is not different in kind from hunger 
and thirst after righteousness. Love of noble personalities is not unlike 
devotion to the Spirit of Life. The person is morally safe who has 
reverence within his inner parts. 

B. The Problem in Perspective 

Some of the essential points in the foregoing articles of educational 
faith may possibly become more vivid if set forth graphically by the aid 
of the two following diagrams, (1) the foundations of character and (2) 
the three-fold re-centering. 




Mt^tiv'died -Couciucl 



Figure I. — Showing the primary place of conduct, the secondary character of 
the sentiments, and the tertiary role of the intellectual processes during early years. 



(1) THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHARACTER 

The most essential fact of all, as represented in the accompanying 
figure, is that the sure foundation of the good life is doing the deed, 
living the life (VI). Moral ideas not based on deeds are hollow; ethical 
faith without works is dead. 

Next in point of time and second also in the emphasis they deserve 
are the moral feelings (VIII). They develop early and behave like 



4 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

instincts. Education does not create them; it may safely assume and use 
them. That which the child in later years thinks is right will be in 
terms of what he has done and admired. 

Last in the order of time, but not least in importance, is moral thought- 
fulness (IX). No child should leave the public school who has not gained 
the ability to make clear, quick, accurate and trustworthy judgments 
about such moral situations as the average person habitually meets. 

Practice in thoughtful self-control in the midst of the group, leading 
and being lead towards that which is likeable and lovable, is the keynote 
of right citizenship and of the good life. 

(2) THE THREE-FOLD RE-CENTERING 

The child is born into the world with the self relatively unorganized — 
a bundle of possibilities. The synthesis that takes place is determined by 



The rToj^KPersoa 




Impersonal _ObiCCts 
Used &>t^ not 
Admire' 



_Per3orte aa 
"Provui^s and 
CoKveniericea 



last i acts aad Xlesirea 

Figure II. — The Threefold re-centering. 



two agencies — (a) the ripening of the native or instinctive tendencies, 
and (b) the work of education in its widest sense, including the direct 
efforts of parents and teachers in repressing or stimulating or reshaping 
the several instincts, and indirectly through creating the right environment. 
Amongst the native endowments the dominant one is self-regard. The 
chances are that the child shall become immoderately self -centered, and 
that the organization which takes place will be on the lower level of 
cruder instincts and desires. (1) Self-regard has been tremendously 
strong amongst animals and in primitive human life and crops out in 



FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES 

children. (2) The undeveloped child is constantly the recipient of kind- 
nesses and learns to think that folks and all things exist for him. (3) He 
takes at face valqe the overestimation of his own worth by jealous 
parents and kin, resulting in heightened self-esteem. (4) Consciousness 
is personal and one's own thoughts and interests are far more vivid and 
real than are those that reach out beyond this self. 

Most of the ills, distresses and tragedies of human kind are directly 
traceable to blindnesses and selfishness. The supreme task of education is 
to carry the child so actively out into the life of others, and up into 
ideal interests that a crude self-centeredness is impossible. 

It must not be forgotten that the original, inherited, relatively unor- 
ganized selfhood is the raw stuff out of which any character qualities 
will ever be made. The child's personality must be respected, its dignity 
and worth assumed at every step. 

In their development the moral values, if liveable and useful, must 
remain ultimately personal. The average normal child, however, needs 
a three-fold recentering: 

1. The transformation of a lower selfhood of cruder instincts and 
desires into "higher" personality of refined tastes (X) of insight, outlook 
and inteUigent purpose (IX). 

2. An awakening into wholesome appreciation of the interests and 
well-being of others (IV) and participation in their programs, customs, 
conventions and institutions (XI), and loyalty to their ideals (XII). 

3. A disinterested admiration of the non-personal values in Nature aad- 
Life (VIII) that glorify both the self and other-than-self and culminate in 
a spirit of reverence (VIII). 

To bring about this three-fold othering of the original unorganized 
life of childhood is the end and aim of character education. 

It will be seen in advance that it does not matter so much whether 
ethics is taught as a school subject, although that is sometimes unobjec- 
tionable; it is not necessary to extract moral blessings from the various 
subjects of instruction, even if they are heavy with "lessons" for conduct; 
it is not important to discuss the 'virtues," for character often becomes 
angular and awkward through self-consciousness. The end of it all is 
that the child should learn to respond to the natural situations he meets 
naturally and well; that his "schooling" in the moral life should be 
practice in living happily, faithfully, gracefully and ideally the larger 
relations into which he is about to emerge. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GOAL 

A. THE SORT OF PERSON AT WHOM THE SCHOOL AIMS 

A person with powers proportionally developed, with mental discrimina- 
tion, aesthetic appreciation, and moral determination ; one aware of his 
social relationships and happily active in the discharge of all obligations; 
one capable of leisure, loving nature, revering human beings, their aspira- 
tions and achievements; one observant of fact, respectful of law and 
order, devoted to truth and justice; one who while loyal to the best 
traditions of his people, dreams and works toward better things ; and 
one in whom is the allure of the ideal, and whose life will not be faithless 
thereto. 

B. SPECIFIC LINES OF PREPARATION 

It is not enough for the schools to aim in general at the ideal person. 
The task of education is more specific. It must prepare boys and girls 
with unfailing certainty to meet successfully all the situations that people 
in their normal life as human beings face. 

These situations are permanent facts either of human nature or of 
an ordered world to which the person must adjust himself. There are 
nine situations demanding definite adjustment. If the individual succeeds 
in meeting these demands, he is already a moral person. If he fails to 
measure up in any one of them, he is, to that extent, a misfit. 

At least eight lines of preparation are so definite and concrete that 
projects may be devised and problems set for inducting pupils into them. 

1. Preparation for Health. — We have been trying chiefly to harvest the 
fruits of culture without sufficient care of the human plant. It is the 
business of the school, working out into the homes, to know that each 
child has the right nourishment, invigorating exercise, and habits of 
cleanliness. Every child has the divine right to be born with the chances 
in his favor of a reasonably sound body free from predispositions toward 
weakness and disease. It is his right too that his original energies should 
develop until they overflow into abounding vitality. Ill health and anemia 
are the basis of moral delinquency, and are the nation's greatest liability. 
The grouch, the pessimist, the disturber generally, is a victim of dormant 
bodily functions. To play, to work, to play again, to feel the zest of 
being a healthy creature, full of animal spirits, is a sign of health 
and sanity. 

2. Preparation for Life in the Group. — The school should keep its 
thought upon the man or woman who is going to move gracefully and 
helpfully among his fellows. Every one must learn the trick of it or fail. 
The world is growing smaller. The free space is used up. The free 
individual who goes his own gait and leads his own life independently 
of the wishes of others has little standing room left. He must find his 
freedam through the group, rather than independently of it. In preparing 
him, the school should begin early and give occasion every day of his 
career to meet the members of his group successfully. The prevailing 
type of school that fosters isolations and insulations of child from child 
will have to undego reconstruction until the school becomes a natural co- 
operative community. 

3. Preparation for Civic Relations. — Every community or municipality 
or state is made by the group. Too often a few lead, the rest follow 
or go back. The fault is to be charged in part against the inertia of 
human nature. The schools will have to bear their share of the blame. 



THE GOAL / 

Educational systems are formed around the idea that the teacher is the 
sole responsible person for the success of the school. The center of 
responsibility must shift to the children. The joy of each one is full 
when allowed to share in the duties and responsibilities of the place. 
If the pupils learn the delight of helping in the conduct of recitations, 
projects, and other activities, the outcome is a heightening of the feeling 
of ownership in the school, and of their pleasure m accepting its tasks 
as personal. Loyalty to the group and the school should ripen naturally 
into loyalty to truth, to the State, and even into '"loyalty to loyalty." 

4. Preparation for Industrial and Economic Relations. — Children should 
learn in the school the satisfaction that comes through productive work; 
the cost in honest effort of a piece of money, and its value in an honest 
purchase. They should see the meaning of wealth until a coin becomes 
a symbol of justice and cooperation among men. They should know full 
well that all waste and misuse of wealth, or unfair dealings, are acts 
of violence against the substantial framework of society. These are 
elements in the building of solid foundations of character in their own 
lives. 

5. Preparation for a Vocation. — The beggar is now a political outlaw. 
He consumes and does not produce. He is a parasite upon the thrift of 
others. During the world war, when our eyes were opened, we saw 
that the idle rich and the fashionable slackers were skilled consumers 
and a social menace. "Work or Fight" was a hard but holy slogan. 
"Produce or suffer social disgrace," is a fair motto for peace as well 
as war. Schools must see that every child is so trained that he shall be 
qualified to take his place in the world's work, to share its obligations 
and benefits. To become both a benefactor and a beneficiary he must 
gain a vision of both service and personal fulfilment through some 
vocation, or through allegiance to some cause, and acquire proficiency 
in that direction. 

6. Preparation for Parenthood and Family Life. — The home is the 
heart of humanity. Right breeding is the base of the triangle of life, 
with a clean atmosphere made by parents as one of the sides, and the 
training of children in a wholesome attitude toward love and marriage 
as the other. Before the school turns out from its doors a young man 
with a certificate of character, it should know that he is full of chivalry 
toward women, tender toward children, scornful of sensual suggestions, 
pure in mind and heart. Vulgarity in speech of boys and girls is like 
a disease — a breeding sore in society. Every boy and girl must see with 
perfect clearness, and vvith an appeal which vibrates through their whole 
being,_ that their future happiness and also the destiny of the race are 
in their keeping, and are dependent upon even their secret thoughts. The 
strong currents of reproductive life must be turned toward healthy off- 
spring of ideal love. 

7. The Mastery of Tradition. (See XI of Chapter I.) 

8. Preparation for the Appreciation of Beauty. — The use of leisure 
time will take care of itself if the art impulse is aroused and trained. 
Children in the earliest years are responsive to objects of beauty. Quite 
early they may learn to intensify their enjoyment of works of art by 
being taught something about art's simplest structural features. To live 
sympathetically with the arts and artists, to become sensitive to the 
attractiveness of the things of nature, including human nature, is pre- 
paration for the good life. The art of living is the flower of the joy 
in right conduct. A fair measure of its attainment is the ability to turn 
the work-a-day world into poetry. * 

The following three objectives are no less important than the foregoing, 
and should be as definitely kept within the focus of conscious effort. The 



8 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

first is, however, incidental to all the others, and the other two are so 
fundamental and inclusive that they should permeate the entire life of the 
school. 

9. Preparation for the Use of Leisure Time. — The measure of the man 
is not so much the vigor v^rith which he recoils from the task as the 
direction of the release. If he learned in school to play a musical in- 
strument, to succeed as a dramatist, to create a comely design, to enjoy 
a good book, to judge and execute a work of art even if it be a bit 
of landscape gardening, or a conversation with a friend, so that he springs 
toward the distinctly ennobling avocations as readily as in the direction 
of mere physical play, he is on the way toward the fuller life. Where 
his heart is, there will his treasure be. It is a well established fact that 
crimes and misdemeanors in the school and in the state are caused by 
unused and misdirected energies. Pupils should have training in making 
up a budget of time, and of using it all profitably and enjoyably. 

10. Preparation for Reverence. — The most sensitive persons there are, 
to the wonder and mystery of things, are the little folk during the kinder- 
garten years. Their sense of the poetry of life should not wither, but 
should be disciplined and deepened until it becomes a reverent insight into 
,the profounder meanings behind and within the facts of the laws of 
' science, the acts of individuals, and the events of history. Reverence 

and worship need hardly be mentioned during the course of school life ; 
but unless the spirit of respect for the nobility of manhood and woman- 
hood, and the sense of admiration for the majesty and beauty that plays 
through facts and events is alive in the child's thought and heart, he is 
not being prepared for the fullest and richest citizenship. Unless there 
is wisdom the people perish. 

11. Preparation for Creative Activity. — The progress of knowledge, 
the spirit of culture, and the improvement of industry have always been 
left by the common consent of the "common" folk to the favored few. 
With the rise of democracy, an experiment has arisen of developing the 
creative energies of each individual. It is every one's natural right to 
put the stamp of his own thought and effort upon his work. Every 
child that has come habitually to find the delight of exercising his own 
ingenuity in school interests and projects, and to try out by the strength 
of his own judgment the better from the worse way, is most surely being 
stolen away from the vast army of the passive ones who must be led and 
fed. The enrichment of national life, if democracy is to win, will be 
realized henceforth by harvesting the smaller increments from individual 
initiative rather than from great discoveries and inventions. 

These main attitudes, constituting the life of the ordinary person, 
can be made the practical fulfilment of the moral law. 



CHAPTER III 

THE ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF THE SCHOOL 

A. THE SCHOOL AS A DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY 

1. The right organization of the school can alone go far toward solving 
the character training problem. — Kindly cooperation is the keynote of the 
moral life. It is also the prevailing spirit of the rightly ordered school. 
The educational institutions that have come down to us historically foster 
individualism rather than cooperation. Our educational traditions have 
over-emphasized repression of the individual under authority rather than 
initiative under kindly leadership. The form of organization of the 
school, just like that of a state, predisposes one to act and think in a 
certain way so that both consciously and unconsciously it sets standards 
of conduct and ideals toward which the individuals move. 

2. The right solution of the problem of democracy- can come only 
through the school. — The highest passion that has actuated the collective 
movements of peoples during the last five centuries has been that of real- 
izing democracy. The world war was an heroic step in that direction. As 
the smoke has cleared away it has left a vision of humankind not so far 
on the road to the land of goodwill as our fond dreams had pictured. 

There is one sure road and one only leading into that land of promise. 
It runs through the life of childhood. If the schools can bring up a 
generation or two of children who have learned through their muscles, 
instincts, and thoughts that it pays to dwell together in mutual helpfulness 
and goodwill, that selfishness in the long run breeds pain and defeat, that 
true happiness comes more surely by giving one's best to the group rather 
than by sucking like a parasite its sustenance from the group, then 
democratic institutions will be saved. 

. 3. The organization of the school in form and spirit should be a 
democratic community. — The best way to prepare for life in a democracy 
is by practicing it. If all our preachments are for democracy and we 
allow our practices to be submission to a somewhat arbitrary authority, 
it is easy to predict the outcome. 

If one should seek the type after which a school should be patterned, 
its model would be that of the home in which the teacher is a companion 
and friend, a big sister, or a kindly mother, rather than that it should be 
built on the model of a business house that handles only dead materials. 
It should be shaped on the lines of a true democracy in which the state 
exists for the individual rather than on those of an imperialism that uses 
men for itself alone. It should take for its type a boy scout camp that 
prepares children to live in peace and goodwill rather than an army camp 
that_ trains more predominantly for throwing themselves into the breach 
in times of crisis. 

4. The schools of the world have been Prussianized. — For a little more 
than a century now the school systems of western countries have been 
borrowing their notions of organization from Prussia. It was in 1838, 
that Horace Mann said that for twenty years all eyes had been turned on 
the Prussian school system as models for our own. That peerless leader 
and prophet of education threw out earnestly the warning that while 
the Prussian methods of teaching the school subjects were' superior to 
our own, its organization was fit only for an imperialism and not for a 
democracy. In spite of that warning we have allowed the imperialistic 
methods to dominate our school systems. They have made for central- 
ization and domination rather than for freedom and initiative. We have 



10 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

borrowed too much from the volkschule and too little from the gymna- 
sium. The Prussian school system was consciously constructed in every 
detail by the favored one-tenth of the nation for the purpose of fixing 
and holding the common people in their commonness and of fashioning 
them into instruments of the state. In the truest sense the mighty strength 
of German imperialism has been founded upon the habits of subservience 
of the children in its common schools. 

America must be as longheaded as Prussia. It must reconstruct its 
house by tearing out, insofar as it needs to, its imperialistic structures and 
rebuilding along lines of democracy. It must plant democracy securely 
in the minds and hearts and conduct of its children. 

5. The world is in danger of becoming anarchised unless the schools 
a/re hastily democratized. — The human problem of first magnitude during 
the next half century is that of interpreting and realizing democracy. The 
common folk who have suffered under imperiaHstic domination in Russia 
are now in the saddle. They are joining hands with those elements in 
other countries including the United States that have been ground under 
the heel of the injustices from capitalism and imperialism. They are 
waging war in spirit and in fact with, some show of success against 
every form of centralization. A clash is sure to come as great, if not 
greater, than the last unless the spirit of kindliness can take the place 
of that of selfishness and greed. The schools are the one great hope of 
averting such a calamity. 

6. An example from the kindergarten. — The kindergarten is the bright- 
est spot in the educational world. Children learn to play and sing and 
work together until their joys and satisfactions are found through one 
another. A few months of that sort of occupation is destined to change 
the temper of mature life of those who enjoy it. Miss Stovall who under 
the tutelage of Mrs. Hearst established the mission kindergarten in the 
slum districts of San Francisco went back years after to study the 
outcome of those schools. She convinced herself that although the per- 
centages of arrests for misdemeanors in those districts rose to a con- 
siderable fraction of the population, not over two or four per cent of the 
children who had been to the kindergarten had caused any civic disturbance. 
If the pupils could be kept not a year or two but twelve years or more in 
schools in which the kindergarten spirit of sociability prevails, the stress 
and strain of mature years could hardly remake them into a race of 
Ishmaels in which the hand of each is lifted against the other. 

7. There are three distinguishing marks of a safe democracy whether 
in school or state. — To organize the school properly requires the clearest 
of insight into the nature of democracy. The differences that exist in 
its interpretation are the cause of much of the strife that now exists and 
of differences in educational policy. Each group or faction is sure of 
one or two of the three essentials of democracy. These are : 

a. Collectivism, centralized authority, and leadership. 

b. Guaranteed freedom of thought and action to the individual and 
of his right of participation at every point in the collective will. 

c. Interacting agencies for insuring the adjustment of individual to 
individual and of group to group and for binding the whole into a living 
organization. 

The recognition of the first characteristic alone is the secret of 
autocracy. The state exists for itself and the individual exists not for 
himself but for the state alone. The recognition of the second mark of 
a democracy is the keynote of anarchism, nihilism, and Bolshevism. This 
form of government fears any centralization of power or authority lest 
the proud right of a free individual should be thwarted. The genius of 
democracy consists in preserving both these extremes through a discovery 



ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF SCHOOL 11 

of many mechanisms for plastic adaptation within the state. The indi- 
vidual exists for the state no more truly than does the state for the in- 
dividual. The steps leading in this direction have been the greatest oi 
human discoveries. Instances of these discoveries are found in the ballot, 
in the selection of representatives, in codes and constitutions, in law 
courts with their juries, in the initiative and referendum and recall and 
all those agencies that stand for free expression of individual choice and 
the guaranteeing of rights and privileges with their accompanying duties 
and responsibilities. It is government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people. This third characteristic, which is the secret of democracy, 
is one which neither imperialism nor anarchism can see. It is that by 
which the individual can take up into himself the strength of the millions, 
can share the riches of all, and can find the higher joy of freedom 
through the group rather than freedom from all responsibility. 

8. The rightly ordered school must have both authority and leadership. — 
There never was perhaps so great a need of clear vision of the nature 
of a true democracy on the part of teachers as now. The schools are 
sure to implant both consciously and unconsciously its true or false 
ideals into childhood. The shapers of the United States Government, 
Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln among them, have with complete 
unanimity opposed a flat democracy that feared centralization and great 
leadership. Not one of them ever advocated either communism or in- 
dividualism, which fail to organize responsibility toward constituted 
authority, the state. True democracy has as great centralization of 
power as imperialism but with this difference, that the authority rises 
from and is vested in the people themselves. It is government by the 
people. The school as an institution represents the collective will of the 
state and must command the respect of the teacher and pupil alike. The 
teacher is the representative of the state as an expert leader. Educational 
practice has had many theorists and experimentalists who have held up 
an ideal of "education according to nature." Teachers who are seized 
with this passion throw over entirely the responsibility of shaping the 
conduct, thoughts, and sympathies of the children. Their temper is more 
fit for a state of anarchy than a democratic state. The teacher must 
accept her place as a kind leader of children and men and as a shaper of 
the destiny of the state. 

9. The school should respect the individuality, the initiative, and the 
personality of each pupil even to the youngest. — The greatest danger of 
government in school and state is for vested authority to cut itself away 
from the group. The state for itself and the individual for the state, 
this is purely autocracy. When the individual lives for himself and ex- 
pects the group also to exist for him, this is pure anarchy. The secret 
of democracy is that the individual and the collective mind exist for each 
other bound together in an organism. Unless the state or school is a 
tender mother toward its children, it is already hardening towards its 
death. The one time superintendent of a large city school system in the 
United States claimed boastfully that he could take out his watch and tell 
what every child and every teacher was doing. Nor had the teacher or 
pupil the slightest determination or control of the system under which 
they lived. To prepare for kindly cooperation and respect for authority 
by a" dozen years of practice under an irresponsible autocracy is like 
learning to walk erect by years of creeping. The dangers of government 
are nearly all on the side of false centralization. Constantly it must strive 
to conduct itself as if it existed alone for the individual, to guard and 
guarantee his freedom. The surest test of a right school spirit is that 
each pupil should speak spontaneously of "our school" and. should have 
a feeling of personal ownership in the place and pride in its well-being. 



12 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

The way in which the school can in its government escape the Scylla 
and Charybdis of autocracy and anarchy, and move successfully in the 
direction of plastic adjustment of each to all in an organization which 
is at the same time an organism, will be indicated in the next section. 

10. The democratic spirit in school brings happiness and health to all 
concerned. — Artificial authority is a heavy burden under which to stagger. 
It grinds the teacher down. To live under such a system also breeds 
a rich progeny of unmoralities and immoralities. To assert the courage 
and fortitude to undergo the discipline of the school without whimpering 
is a trait of character too nearly like that of a criminal who is able to 
steel himself against the penalty administered by the state. To trick the 
teacher and get ahead of her is good training in ingenuity but not in 
citizenship. It will be a great victory when the symbol of a happy mother 
and her kindly children is finally substituted for that of the Hoosier school 
master and Bud Means. The sweetness of real companionship of teacher 
and pupil in enjoying each other and accomplishing nice things together 
is an unmixed satisfaction and contains within itself the very essence of 
democracy. 

11. The mere physical appointments of the school can do much to make 
or mar the democratic spirit. — The setting in double rows of rigid desks 
screwed to the floor with pupils marching to and fro is a relic of the 
military camp and factory ideals of the school and indicates usually that 
the pupils are also screwed down to a system. The writer visited a con- 
solidated school in which desks of nearly all the classes had given place 
to movable seats that could be shifted into groups for common tasks 
and projects or could be slipped aside to give place for games and folk 
dances. Such an arrangement was an outgrowth of the spirit of comrade- 
ship that had seized the community in building the school and reacted 
in turn wholesomely on the spirit of the place. All were busy and willing 
to serve in spite of the fact that they were bound by the restrictions of 
the rather rigid curriculum. 

B. STUDENT PARTICIPATION 

1. Student participation forms character. — If the student feels himself 
a responsible agent in the conduct and success of the school, he rises to 
meet it with a new sense of the dignity of his own personality and of 
the importance of the program in which he is existing. Thoughts about 
the conduct of others are for him shadowy and unreal ; thoughts about his 
own conduct are vital; to wrestle out and solve an actual situation that 
arises in play and work among his fellows and finally make an affirma- 
tion of his own of relative choices and values goes to the depths of his 
being. Such affirmations are the stuff out of which character is forged. 
When the school is a group of cooperating and interacting persons such 
choices arise constantly. 

To estimate fairly the value of student participation demands a three- 
fold discrimination, as to time in life, as to methods of doing it, and as 
to what student participation really means. These three distinctions are 
the theme of the following three topics. 

2. Student participation does not mean self-government. — In the purest 
sense no .f<?//-government is possible for a human being in any sort of 
society. No man lives to himself nor can he. Even on the desert island 
he finds a Friday and a code and the infaHible laws of nature that en- 
force upon him their necessities. Student participation means that each 
one is bearing his share of the joint responsibility of the group. 

3. Student participation belongs principally to the later grades and 
high school. ---'Dvir'wig the earliest baby years in the home and school the 
spirit of democracy should be dominant but its expressed forms are 



ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF SCHOOL 13 

quite out of place. Gradually during the later years as occasion arises 
the organized life of companionship may take shape in some form of a 
junior republic. In its inception it is a play government in anticipation 
of the more serious forms of control that shall follow. 

4. Student participation must observe the natural differentiation of 
rights and duties. — It is never a question of how much control students 
should assume; the real problem refers to the kind of duties that fall 
properly to their lot. Attempts at self-government are constantly ending 
in foolishness and failure, for the reason that it is assumed that the 
students are taking a hand in the running of the entire institution. A 
fair analogy of the right division of labor is found in the state. 

The "inalienable rights" in the state fall materially into three groups. 

a. Those belonging to the state itself over which the individual should 
have very little control unless it be in the long run and after the collective 
mind has had time to act, as, for instance, in the case of leading armies 
and shaping a constitution. 

b. Those in which individuals and the relatively stable government 
have joint concern as in the institution of marriage and the kind of 
ceremonies which are observed. 

c. Those belonging largely to the individual, and which the state exists 
to safeguard, as, for instance, what he shall plant and where he shall sell. 

In school life there is a corresponding differentiation. 

a. That in which school boards and teachers stand as the official rep- 
resentatives of the collective will and in which the students can have only 
advisory power, if any at all, like school taxation, or building a curriculum. 

b. That in which school authorities and students may have collective 
control, as in the question of honor in examinations, society functions, and 
the like. 

c. That in which students may have essentially complete management. 
The items of control they assume will depend much upon circumstances 
and local conditions. 

It is evident that the question of how much control is advisable passes 
over into one of the kinds that naturally belong to the student. A 
modicum of participation is a saving grace if it assures a feeling of mem- 
bership in the school community and sets free pent-up powers that are 
wanting an avenue of expression. It is well to increase the load placed 
upon the students just to the extent that they show a taste for it and 
their capacity to carry it through. 

5. Preparing the student and community sentiment for self-government.—' 
It must be_ admitted that experiments in student government have failed 
in a majority of instances. Sometimes they are imposed artificially upon 
the students without their readiness to accept it. It should arise naturally 
and grow out of a felt need. It ordinarily arises, when successful, as a 
transition from an already satisfactory school government. If there is 
lurking in it a tinge of concession to the students on the part of authorities 
who have failed, the new organization has also in it the seeds of disorder. 
It must be founded altogether upon a spirit of cooperation and mutual 
goodwill. 

6. The problems undertaken must be a man's size.— The duties under- 
taken must be of sufficient magnitude and significance to summon the best 
thought and ingenuity of the student body and to call out genuine leader- 
ship. The writer visited a high school a while ago in which 1,600 students 
were inducted by the faculty into a ponderous scheme of self-government 
with the only objective that of preserving the floors, walls, and grounds 
from defacement and keeping them free from litter. It was a bit of 
janitor or police duty that was not worthy of their latent energies and 
was foredoomed to failure. On the contrary one is reminded of the 



14 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

continued success of the Montclair, New Jersey, high school, in which 
four committees undertake as many great enterprises that ramify through- 
out the whole life of the place and work for the present and future 
success of the school. 

7. Students should undertake positive and constructive problems, not 
negative and preventive. — Even the matter of preventing cheating and 
other disorders is not a proper place to begin. A question of that sort 
naturally puts the pupils in a critical and unhappy relationship to one 
another. The negative and preventive measures will naturally arise, but 
they should be incidental to greater constructive programs. 

Often times attempts in this direction are not only negative but fictitious. 
They represent autocracy under disguise. Students appointed as monitors 
in examinations or to watch the lines of march when not placed there by 
the will of the student body are not in a position to exercise their own 
best judgment. They are placed there by the teachers who are screened 
in the background as prompters ; all such is a spurious imitation of real 
democracy. 

8. The students should be trusted implicitly. — The responsibility and 
accountability of their officers should be to the student body primarily and 
only incidentally and secondarily to the school officers. Mr. Dutch of 
Montclair in a letter to the writer says : 

"We never hold anyone accountable to us. The responsibility rests 
between the student and students in charge and ends there. We never 
meddle, interfere, inquire, or expect information, and we have never 
been disappointed in the results." 

School authorities must show the officials of the student body the 
same deference and respectful consideration within the range of their 
duties that they expect in return from student officials. 

9. In form the school government should be fashioned after that of 
the state. — This will vary according to the situation. Insofar as possible 
experience in student government should be preparation for the life they 
will be leading as members of a larger republic into which they will be 
graduating. 

The writer of these notes has tried out student participation several 
times, for example, in a night school in a factory town in New England 
and in a large high school in the middle west, and knows that it can work 
to the happiness and profit of all concerned. He has observed it many 
times, both succeeding and failing in a good many places and believes 
it will succeed always when undertaken thoughtfully and in the right 
spirit. It is destined to fail when it cuts sharply across the essential 
laws of human nature and the processes of good government. It must 
succeed if democracy in the state remains safe. If ground into the very 
fibre of a few generations of children, it will stand so secure that nothing 
can destroy it. 

C. GOVERNMENT, DISCIPLINE AND PUNISHMENT 

There is an unlimited body of sound wisdom on the question of school 
discipline, which needs not to be reiterated in this discussion. It is easily 
accessible to most readers. Before giving a few of the precepts that 
fall directly in line with this report, it will be sufficient merely to 
mention some of the most stable and useful doctrines in regard to 
discipline. 

1. A catalog of zvell established precepts. — Corporal punishments are 
brutalizing to teacher and to pupil. 

Never punish in anger. 

Punishment should be for reform not retribution. 

It should not be resorted to except as a necessary means to a desired 
end. 



ORGANIZATION AND CONTROL OF SCHOOL 15 

Make the punishment fit the deed. 

It should be fitted to the individuality of the child. 

Discover the cause of the misdemeanor and work from cause to result. 

The pupil should feel the majesty of the moral law that lies also back 
of the teacher. 

Guided by a higher law, the teacher must show undeviating consistency. 

Appeal to the higher motives of self-respect; don't humihate the child. 

Pass lightly by many faults ; they will drop away of their own accord. 

Distinguish always between the child and his fault. 

The teacher's problem is to make obedience to law and order attractive ; 
to aid the moral law. To follow it by compulsion is no part of moral 
discipline. 

Ihere are a few precepts so directly in line with the temper of this 
report that they need perhaps a special word of emphasis. They are in 
tune with the fundamental notion that the school should be a community of 
real boys and girls meeting each other and the normal life situations 
naturally. In such a school the problem of discipline seldom arises. 
There are occasional cases of misdemeanor that need discipline or even 
demand punishment. These are rare, however, and are incidental to the 
active conduct of the school. 

2. Misdemeanors are usually the direct results of pent up passions. — 
Whatever impulses are slumbering in the heart of a child must find ex- 
pression ih one way or another. The instincts have the dynamic of race 
life within them ; they cannot be killed ; they can be harnessed and used. 
Repressed impulses are like dammed up waters that rise and rise to the 
breaking point and threaten disaster. Recent studies of human nature 
have proven this thoroughly. Explosions of temper, fits of anger, rebel- 
lions and antipathies, stubbornness and anemia and the like are in- 
variably traceable, by those who can follow them, to repressed impulses. 
The repressions can be released and dissipated through wholesome and 
normal activity backed up by interest and enthusiasms. 

There is a subtle delusion to teacher and pupil alike in the supposed 
results of discipline by repression. The teacher after some disciplinary 
victory enjoys the feeling of power and imagines that she has hemmed in 
securely the temptation to disorder on the part of the pupil. She has 
solved it for the moment, but she or others will reap the harvest. The 
pupil consciously imagines that he has submitted to the strong hand of 
authority, but down within his inner parts slumbers usually the feeling 
of resentment and unfair advantage that will slowly and surely find its 
way to the surface. 

3. The way to moral health is through expression rather titan through 
repression. — The game of the teacher is to turn selfishness into the channels 
of higher self-realization and to shape its energies by allowing the child 
to taste the sweets of realization through the group. She must use up 
the fighting instincts, as William James has indicated, by translating them 
into the zest for combating difficult problems. She must redirect the re- 
productive passions along lines of innocent companionship. It is possible 
with a little skill in playing upon the harp of the human instincts to bring 
them into harmony like that of music. The art of repression alone will 
bring no music out of an instrument. Equally futile is government simply 
by repression when applied to the life of the child. 

4. The power of the collective zvill is the real control of conduct. 

The power of public opinion in society and in the state resides in the 
collective judgments of approval and disapproval that play among indi- 
viduals. From this there is no escape. This power should have full 
play in school life and will naturally do so if the teacher will stand 
sufficiently out of the way to let it express itself. An illustration is as 
follows : 



16 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

It was a sixth grade room. There was no "order" of the military 
kind but the spirit of mutual control was as gentle as that of a cultured 
home. Half the room was occupied with reports from a study of sources 
and discussions about Washington's relation to his army at Valley Forge. 
A boy, not of the reciting group, was showing signs of restlessness and 
of letting off his energies by being "smart." Miss George, sitting in 
the rear of the room, was the moderator of the discussion. She paused 
just long enough to ask if L. was disturbing anyone. There was an instant 
pause when a little girl arose and said, "I should like to say, if I may, that 
L. seems to think we want to watch his antics, but I should like to 
assure him, for my part, that I haven't time to do so." The incident 
had passed in a quicker time than it takes to tell it. There was not a 
sign anywhere in the room except of bits of approval of the little girl's 
opinion of the case. The discipline was complete. L. had no appeal and 
no recourse. Had the teacher been ungraceful enough to reprove and 
punish the boy he might have caught sly eyes sanctioning his misdemeanor, 
and he might easily have found ways of escaping from the authority 
superimposed upon him. To feel the collective judgment of one's peers 
is the heart of the moral impulse. Conscience is called sometimes a voice 
because it contains within itself the latent tones of approval or con- 
demnation of the group. 

5. The power of suggestion on the part of the teacher is her best 
instrument of control. — Mr. Geyan points out in "Education and Heredity" 
that the powers of suggestion when carried to the point of hypnosis can 
transform often a completely distorted nature into one of refined moral 
perceptions. There is no difference in kind between hypnotic suggestion 
and the infinite number of moral suggestions that play from life to life and 
help to shape its sympathies and direct its conduct. The skill in discipline 
of a right-minded teacher is in her constant expectancy of decorum and 
of interest on the part of the pupils. That unconsciously directs them 
in the right channels. She places around them images from art, music, 
and literature and biography, that play upon their minds through the 
subtle power of suggestion. 

The up-shot of this discussion is that it is the business of the teacher 
and the school to translate external authority into discipline and then 
into self-realization, and to slip by the need of punishment through the 
operation of social approvals and condemnations. The moral person is 
one who has become sensitive to the social will and whose heart and mind 
are attuned to the profounder appeals of the life about him. 



CHAPTER IV 

SOME WAYS OF PRESERVING, DIRECTING, AND EXERCISING 
THE ENTIRE INTEGRITY OF THE CHILD 

The rapid transformations now taking place in the educational world 
nearly all further the interest of character education. The keynote of 
them all is the preservation of the natural tastes, insights and purposes 
of children while at the same time giving them wise direction. They are 
all in terms of developing the conscious, purposeful self-activity of the 
child. They naturally move in the direction of calling out his sense of 
moral values. There are three aspects of this educational transformation 
that deserve particular mention — Noble Deeds, The Socialized Recitation, 
and Project Methods. An important part of this report is the presenta- 
tion of bodies of first hand material along each of these lines. 

A. NOBLE DEEDS 

Since the time, about eighteen years ago when Lexington, Kentucky, 
began making a success of books of "Golden Deeds," in which pupils 
recorded and illustrated with pictures significant moral acts, there has 
been some progress. Superintendent Blackmar of Ottumwa, a member 
of the committee, has been trying out a method of varying the procedure 
for the different grades of the school and with success. The transcriber 
of these lines learns from a citizen of Ottumwa that "Nothing in the 
recent history of our city has aroused more genuine interest and enthusiasm 
among the pupils and parents, than the building of these character books." 
Children find new incentives for hunting through books for choice bits. 
They rummage the periodicals for attractive illustrations. They draw 
the members of the family into their projects. All the while they are 
making the liveliest judgments of the moral worth of selections of litera- 
ture and works of art. 

This plan is based upon the law that whatever calls upon the creative 
energies of the child and leads him to wholesome self-expression is a 
valuable factor in his ethical development. For this work children are 
best grouped into three divisions, the first group consisting of first and 
second grades; the second group consisting of third, fourth and fifth; 
and the third of sixth, seventh and eighth. 

The teachers select a number of short, beautiful, suggestive, inspiring 
quotations from current or classical literature, suited to the age and 
mental development of the respective groups. These are discussed, mem- 
orized, and illustrated by material drawn as far as possible from the 
experience and observation of the children themselves. Each child is 
provided with a note book to be decorated after his own taste, and entitled, 
"Things Which Make Life Worth While," or some similarly suggestive 
name. Children then begin a daily quest for good and pleasing pictures 
to illustrate the sentiments and ideals which they have studied; and as 
proper material is discovered it is brought in, and under the supervision 
of the teacher — not too freely exercised — it may be incorporated in the 
book, properly accompanied by its quotation. These pictures are selected 
and used not primarily for their artistic value but for the appeal which 
they make to the interest and intelligence of the child himself. Children 
are surprisingly observant, apt and ingenious in selecting illustrative 
material when their energy has been directed to such a quest. 

The plan is varied in different grades to suit the pupils' stage of 
development. In the first group, the book is compiled as a class effort, 
children bringing their material at a given time, comparing and passing 

17 



18 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

as a class upon the suitability of the selections. By a natural process, 
through the law of suggestion, the cooperation of eye, hand, memory, 
and imagination stimulate the forming of ideals and the clarifying of 
motives which govern conduct. In the older groups the work is left 
more and more to the initiative of the pupils, the teacher confining her 
efforts to assisting in the selection of the literary material which serves 
as the basis for the work. She must study the moral codes of children 
in different stages of development in order that she may find material 
which will enlist their interest. 

In the first group, such simple virtues as bodily cleanliness, love of 
pets, animals and babies should be dealt with; in the next group, industry, 
personal honor, truthfulness, loyalty to friends and country ; in the last 
group, in addition to using pictorial illustrations, pupils keep a journal 
galled by some such title as "My Treasury of Experience," in which 
each writes from day to day incidents exemplifying active or positive 
exercise of the will in virtuous conduct, such as self-control, kindness 
to the weak and dependent, self-sacrifice, or cooperation in games or work; 
these incidents to be drawn absolutely from his own experience and ob- 
servation among school fellows, friends, or neighbors. All incidents of an 
unwholesome and degraded nature are positively barred on the principle 
that whatever things are good, pure, lovely, and of good report are the 
things that must be thought on if strong character is to be builded. 

B. THE SOCIALIZED RECITATION 

1. Meaning and Value of the Socialised Recitation. — The recitation 
has had an unhappy history. It has been a search for flaws and weak- 
nesses, a sort of severe diagnosis of a possibly disordered intelligence, 
even when not an act of mental vivisection. Fortunately the analytical 
or diagnostic method is falling away all along the line. To think together, 
to plan together, to enjoy together — that is the right parent-child and 
teacher-pupil relation. The recitation is a time set apart for closer con- 
tacts with one another and with some thought-project or problem. 

In life, problems are not attacked usually by the isolated individual. 
Indeed, it is very unlikely that an individual will long maintain an interest 
in them without the sympathetic support and cooperation of others. The 
problems will be better solved when a number of persons are interested 
and like-minded with respect to what is to be done." Here is the first 
great function of the socialized recitation. No individual student studying 
in isolation will get the same conviction regarding a public moral question 
as he will get when working in a group. In other words, a class of pupils 
may be regarded as in training for that intelligent like-mindedness which 
is essential for group action in public affairs. 

It seems certain that some of the greatest moral lessons are learned 
as a by-product of the regular activities in and about the school. In 
other words, we can learn how to act in a social way not merely by the 
direct study of what constitutes good conduct but also by the practice of 
good conduct in all of the activities of the school. The school recitation 
offers opportunities which are unusually rich in their possibilities for whole- 
some moral training. 

Many of these possibilities have been realized in the socialized recita- 
tion. The essence of this method is that it be conducted in such a way 
as to duplicate conditions under which people work in life outside the 
school, and so train pupils in proper cooperation and in right attitudes 
toward ea_ch_ other. There are several conditions which must be provided 
if the socialized recitation is to make these contributions. First, the class 
must work upon a problem which they feel to be socially worth while. 
This may seem but one way of stating the fact that the pupils must 



THE INTEGRITY OF THE CHILD 



19 



take the problem as their own. It really involves more than this. The 
pupil's motive for attacking the problem must arise from his recognition 
of the importance of- the solution in life outside the school. Such a 
problem is almost certain to have a moral setting. The second require- 
ment is that the class, in solving this problem, work cooperatively much 
after the manner of the committee of the whole. This involves a feeling 
on the part of every pupil that not only he but every pupil in the class is 
responsible for giving his best efforts to the attempt to secure a satis- 
factory solution to the problem at hand. The third requirement is that 
much of the initiative for the formulation of the problem and for suggest- 
ing steps for its solution shall lie with the class and be accepted definitely 
as their responsibility. 

Particular attention is called to the first of these requirements, for 
unless the problem seems vital in life outside the school and can be 
appreciated to be so by the class, the foundation and proper initiative 
for cooperative work is lacking. Recitations which do not involve an 
attack upon a vital social problem are almost certain to degenerate into 
mere artificial make-believe. 

2. Examples of the Socialised Recitation. — There are many examples 
of socialized recitations in the now extended literature of the subject. 
Stenographic reports of good instances are found in C. L. Robbins' "The 
Socialized Recitation." 

A remarkably successful experiment in the socialized recitation is the 
work of Miss Ethel R. Golden. An essential aspect of the plan is that 
the classes each organized for their work so that they became not only 
democracies but republics with their proper officers. They and the teacher 
laid out the work and after that the pupils assumed the "weight of 
responsibility for carrying the plan to completion. The teacher became 
a friendly adviser rather than a taskmaster. Several teachers under her 
supervision adopted the method and also with success. 

There is never one of the boys and girls who have come from those 
classes but speaks of the work with a smile of enthusiasm. Three of 
them were asked to write confidentially their impressions of it and their 
replies are given below. There is little doubt that it is the socialization 
of Miss G.'s recitations that has been an important factor in turning 
indifferent boys and girls into wide-awake, morally responsible young 
men and women. 

Miss Golden has been asked to describe briefly her methods in ''The 
Golden Circle," a title concocted by one of the groups : 

"Twenty pupils entering the ninth year were selected to do four 
semesters' work in three semesters. No really poor students were in- 
cluded but more than half had been rated only ordinary by their former 
teachers. The pupils were not informed of the proposed increase in speed 
until they noticed that they were far ahead of the other sections. 

"The instructor believed that no one has a right to restrict the activities 
of children unnecessarily or arbitrarily, and that the English teacher 
herself receives the best part of the training in the usual recitation work. 
Therefore the restrictions of the school were gradually removed. One 
privilege at a time was conceded, or right granted, but nothing was 
said about the ultimate intention of putting the responsibility upon the 
pupils. It was perhaps three months before they were fully in charge. First 
they were allowed to sit where they wished each day, then to move about 
or talk provided they were courteous and did not interfere with the ac- 
complishment of the work. Later the idea of organization was broached, 
and received by the pupils enthusiastically. The officers were a chairman, 
secretary, substitute, and two critics. The instructor became a Director 
and her duties were defined by the constitution. This important docu- 



20 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

ment, framed by a committee in conference with the Director, gave to 
the members of the group all the freedom that would be given by the 
ideas of courtesy and consideration for the work to be done. The 
chairman appointed a program committee who met with the Director and 
divided the lesson assignments into topics or sections which were presented 
by the pupils standing before the class. These programs were duplicated 
and distributed in advance, three or four programs on a sheet. A desk was 
placed in the front of the room at which the chairman and secretary 
sat. At the stroke of the last bell the meeting was called to order without 
reference to the presence of the Director. The minutes of the previous 
meeting were read and necessary business transacted before the program. 
In the report of their critics much emphasis was placed on constructive 
criticism rather than mere fault finding. After this the Director was 
asked to take charge and this gave her an opportunity to round up the 
work. 

"The chairman was expected to control the sessions in proper form and 
the critics were severe in their condemnation of any inefficiency, or 
lapse from courtesy, or interference with the work. Officers were elected 
every two weeks by ballot which gave all a chance for practice in par- 
liamentary procedure. 

"They exacted of their speakers correct position, and a presentation 
of the topic which was complete and as interesting as possible. If the 
pupil was assigned a section in the composition text he was expected 
to invent a new way to call out from the class the important points. They 
were very ingenious in this, and skilful in working out questions which 
would 'require a real recitation from the one called on, a most excellent 
training ift methods of study. The class responded as carefully and 
courteously to the questions of their mates as to those of the Director. 
Speeches, debates, impromptu dialogues, and discussions of current events 
were part of the daily work. Dramatization was used whenever it was 
possible in the literature, one group reading the parts while another 
directed their movements. In case of any uncertainty as to procedure 
they appealed to the Director who would discuss the point with them and 
let them work it out themselves if possible. 

"Standards for rating their work were placed on the bulletin board. 
At the end of the six weeks period they handed in their estimates. If 
this did not agree with that of the Director a conference was held 
and an agreement reached before the grade was sent to the office. They 
were very successful in their self-measurement except in the oral English 
where their natural embarrassment sometimes made them underrate their 
efforts. 

"Pupils_ said they looked forward all day to that period and the 
teacher enjoyed it as much as they. The attendance was very regular, 
and the amount and quality of work done was a revelation to pupils, 
teacher and parents. The pure joy of living and working together 
carried both teacher and pupils on with the minimum of effort to the 
maximum of result. 

"The same form of organization was later introduced in many other 
classes and under other teachers with great success. The feature that 
was most gratifying was the marked improvement in the poorest pupils, 
those on whom prodding had no effect. They were soon happily at work 
and eager to do their share in the work of the group." 

OPINIONS OF PUPILS 

The following letters were confidential responses to a request from 
the Chairman of collaborators asking for their judgment of "The Golden 
Circle." They are condensed by omitting duplications. 



THE INTEGRITY OF THE CHILD 21 

LETTER FROM M. E. C. 

"Miss G. conducted her class on the honor system. The boys and 
girls were entirely on their own responsibility as far as order was 
concerned. We thought it was only because we loved Miss G. that we 
had so much respect for her in the class room. But I believe now it 
was not only our love for her but the fact that we were on our honor. 
We were unaccustomed to it and it pleased us to be trusted. 

"All recitations were given to the class and not to Miss G. It might 
have been easier to face the teacher when we recited but it was one of 
the points she stressed, that we should talk to the class, and it helped 
us to overcome self-consciousness. I should never have been able to 
speak in the class room if I had not had that training as I was very self- 
conscious at that time in my life. We always thought it funny when 
Miss G. would be displeased at our turning to her in our reports or 
speeches. But now I realize that she wished to create a class feeling 
and this she evidently did, for we felt glad to speak when we thought 
we were giving to the class. In this way we became personally interested 
in each other and a feeling of fellowship was created. 

''I looked forward to this class from the moment that school started 
in the morning. The subject I enjoyed most was the study of Macbeth. 
Scenes from this were acted in the class room. We gave the witch 
scene, the banquet scene, the temptation and downfall of Macbeth and 
the sleep-walking scene. We were never so delighted as when Miss G. 
darkened the room for our banquet scene. We had a real ghost who 
appeared from behind a screen, murderers who came from behind another, 
a long table (imaginary of course) with guests in rows along each side. 
We all loved to be in those scenes and I think we did them quite well. 

"Miss G.'s room was always so pleasant and bright. She had plants 
just filling the windows and there was a vine beginning to trail itself 
over the blackboard at the back of the room. At the front there were 
inspiring posters (this was in war time) and two crossed flags. 

"Another thing that made me love the class was the discussion of 
current events. I had always dreaded these because they seemed dry. 
But Miss G. made them very interesting because she was so interested 
herself. 

"I enjoyed Miss G.'s class more than any other because I got more 
out of it mentally, morally and spiritually, but whether I worked or 
not I can not say. I contributed more to that class than to any other, 
but I didn't consider it work. 

"My respect for the order and discipline of the group — well, I never 
considered respecting it because it never occurred to me to disrespect it. 
The class was always so well planned and so interesting that we never 
thought of being disrespectful. When a newcomer to the class had to be 
spoken to by Miss G. it shocked me so it haunted me for days and I 
dislike to remember it. 

"I felt the same about doing my part. I never considered not doing 
it, although it was hard at first because I was naturally self-conscious. 

"Until just now I never thought of the Golden Circle as a "class." 
The "classes" I have known have been so stilted, most of them; they have 
meant hard work and relief when they were over for the day. But Miss 
G.'s class was so formally informal, so refreshing and interesting. "Class- 
mates" in my other classes merely meant people whom I should speak to 
when I met them. There was no common interest. But Miss G.'s pupils 
were brothers and sisters, we had strong common interests, so strong 
that after our class relationship had been taken away we formed a 
social relationship through a club." 



22 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM F. F. H. 

"You hint in your letter of the point of bringing out the best there 
is in young folks. This seems to me precisely what the result is, after 
you sum up all the different works of Miss G. She always brought 
out the best there was in us. 

"One thing that may appear a very small thing will always stay by 
me. She surrounded us with an atmosphere of interest and pleasure. 
One never failed to find it much easier to be interested in his studies in a 
room filled with flowers and ferns that spoke clearer than words of how 
she wanted us to be happy with her, rather than in a work-a-day, inevitable 
school room. Her room never gave the school room idea ; it was primarily 
a pleasant place for us to come together and have an hour of pleasant, 
instructive recreation. We enjoyed that class more than any other. The 
discipline of the class was as nearly perfect as I can imagine in a high 
school class. 

"One other part of the work we enjoyed with Miss G. was entirely 
unique in my experience in school. She was the one teacher that made it 
a part of her definite aims that we have fun in her classes. She made up 
games for us for variety in learning our lessons and the serious side 
of our work was never emphasized too much. I think that is one big 
part of her charm for us." 

EXTRACTS FROM LETTER FROM K. B., A MEMBER OF A SENIOR CLASS CONDUCTED 

IN THE SAME WAY 

"I wish to say that during my whole high school career there was not 
any class from which I derived so much benefit and received so much 
pleasure as Miss G.'s English. 

"In all my other classes there didn't seem to be the same spirit put 
into the work. Some of the poorest students in the others were Miss G.'s 
best. There was a spirit of cooperation, something unheard of in the 
other classes. Each fellow did his part and depended on the others to 
do theirs. It taught a wholesome respect for your superiors, even though 
they be your classmates, a thing that must be learned sooner or later 
and a class is an ideal place for it. 

"The respect for order and discipline was wonderful. Miss G. could 
leave the room and be satisfied that things were running as smoothly 
as though she were there. Many a time I have seen the chairman call 
the class to order at nine o'clock without Miss G. being there and the 
students obeyed to the last man." 

3. Socialised examinations. — The writer has been trying out the plan 
for more than four years of having students grade themselves. These 
grades are turned in unless there is some lack of agreement between 
the teacher's judgment of the quality of the student's work and his ranking 
of himself. Such differences of opinion seldom arise. In order to show 
the pupil up to himself and to the group a good many tests are given, 
sometimes as a surprise. Often the examinations are a running fire of 
forty specific points to be answered in half as many minutes. The pupils 
grade their own papers, or, by exchanging, grade one another's, and the 
grades are read. No one regards the matter as more than a game, for the 
serious concern is with the thoughtful, constructive work of the group. 

There is a close correspondence always between the pupil's self-rating 
and the teacher's judgment of him. The correlation runs as high as .94. 
A colleague of the writer has found an equally close correlation in his 
classes. 

The method helps to place the responsibility for good work where 
it belongs, and changes the attitude of the pupil towards himself, his 
subject of study, and the teacher. 



THE INTEGRITY OF THE CHILD 23 

C. THE PROJECT-PROBLEM . METHOD 

1. Illustrations of the project-problem method. — One of the foundation 
principles of the course in moral education is the provision for carrying 
moral ideas into action. Any device which will tie up the instruction 
in the school with practical situations in life is a means which may be 
used to accomplish this purpose. In the field of home economics, agri- 
culture, and manual training this has been accomplished under a technique 
known as the "project" or the "project method." As the term has been 
used in these fields such a method involves attacking the practical problem 
taken in its natural setting, and also the use of concrete materials, 
particularly in a constructive way. Examples of such projects are: 
baking a cake, making a chair, constructing a miniature reinforced con- 
crete bridge, raising a prize calf. In all of these projects the pupil 
faces essentially the same situations, encounters the same type of difficulties, 
and succeeds or fails for the same reasons that are found in life outside 
the school. In all cases the measure of the teaching involved is per- 
formance. Such activities essentially make for interest and insure a 
more rigorous training on the part of students. 

It is clear that this type of instruction provides an unusually direct 
training in conduct. It is, happily, receiving sympathetic consideration 
by educators. A simple example in the primary grades is the following : 
A group of primary children, having noticed that lawns in the vicinity 
of a school were being spoiled by students who were cutting across lots, 
decided to take for their responsibility the job of protecting these lawns. 
Their work consisted not in the discussion of what might be done, but 
in the making of plans which were to be executed by them. They made 
sign boards, upon which they printed such signs as "Please, Help Save 
the Grass," "Don't Spoil the Lawn." If such a training could be given 
for meeting all moral situations the problem of moral education would 
be essentially solved. 

2. Some principles determining the selection of projects. — The project 
in education, while in tune with old and well established usages, is so 
new as a pedagogical device that it needs to discipline its procedure 
by the recognition of certain guiding principles. 

a. Every project should involve one or more problems that appeal to 
the child's interests and challenge his ingenuity. 

b. The problem should at least seem to be of the child's own devising 
and the solution his own discovery. Without doubt the pupil progresses 
most rapidly_ and works most persistently when attempting to accomplish 
purposes which are accepted as his own. 

c. The project should unify all the pupil's powers around some mean- 
ingful activity. A right project or problem is one that seems to him 
significant — the building of a sled, the successful rearing of a pet, helping 
purchase a victrola. In its prosecution the fulness of play and the 
discipline of_ work are fully blended. Fresh powers are summoned. The 
personality is organized around a purposeful end. Such integration of 
the selfhood in the direction of worth-while achievement is the heart 
of "moral integrity." 

d. Though not necessarily so, most projects should involve a community 
of eflFort. The spirit of the group vitalizes the interests of each one. 
The truest fellowships spring up among those devoted to common causes 
The surest mark of the good person is his ability to enter sympathetically 
into the activities of a group and to accept his share in common enter- 
prises. Habits of social responsiveness are the best training in moral 
responsibility. 

e. The best projects are usually those that prepare for those pursuits 
that are socially desirable. The teacher must accept with great caution 



24 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

the notion that education should be organized around childrens' interests 
and purposes. To cater overmuch to their more or less whimsical desires 
is to make spoiled children, and may produce social misfits. The teacher 
at her best is the mediator between the child's interests and society's ideals. 
She combines the functions of artist, creator and social leader. She is 
to induce and strengthen the wholesome interests and right purposes 
of the pupil and identify with the commonly accepted standards and 
ideals of the best persons outside the school. 

/. Many projects are valuable for orientation and thus for vitalizing 
the flatness and f actuality of ordinary humdrum existence. In reproducing 
the customs and habits of the North American Indians, for example, 
pupils get outside their own round of life, sympathize with the ways of 
another tribe, reproduce in fact and fancy its problems and come back 
into their own tribe much enriched, with fresh power to estimate and 
appreciate its ways and to see them in perspective. 



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IN TERMS OF IDEAS 



tion Apprenticeship in citizenship 

Self-realization 

Moral thoughtfulness 
Self-discovery 

Mental poise and 'stability 
Organization of a new self-hood 



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Elementary Ethics 
Vocation and group Ethics 



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IX X XI 

THINKING IN TERMS OF IDEAS 



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Spontaneous play impulse 

Dramatic impulse 

Finer sentiments 
Individualization 

Nature admirations 



Socialization 



Apprenticeship In citizenship 



Individualization Gang Spirit 

Interest in detail Hero-worship 

Suggestibility Passion to count as a person Self-realization 

Competitive socialization Moral thoughtfulness 

Unmoral Self-centred Adventure Restless striving Self-discovery 

Pubescence Mental poise and stability 

Symbolism "Moral interregnum" Organization of a new self-hood 



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Dramatization 



Cutting 



Modeling 



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Projects 
Plays and games 



Make-believe — fairies and fables 



Free expression 



Myth and legend 



Memorizing 

Projects 



Heroes Rationalized conduct 

"Case methods" 



"Noble deeds" Adventure 

Stories of great men 



Moral thoughtfulness 

Elementary Ethics 
Vocation and group Ethics 



"Cubs" Scouting 

Cooperative play and work 



Socialization Idealization 

Fiction Call to life and action 



Chart I. Showing the Nascencies of Development and the Centres of Ethical Emphasis 



CHAPTER V 

FITTING THE METHODS AND MATERIALS TO THE CHILD'S 
DEVELOPMENT 

The proper selection of character training materials and how to use 
them depends somewhat upon the tastes and needs of children as deter- 
mined by the period or stage of development through which they are 
passing. What are the fundamental needs of child nature at the different 
epochs, to which the curriculum must temper itself? In other words, 
what are the latent moral demands of each period of growth? That is 
the topic to which we must briefly address ourselves. 

The accompanying diagram is meant to indicate how in the complex 
stream of consciousness various interests and enthusiasms rise and fall 
within it. The relatively unified stream runs from left to right through 
the middle of the chart. The time reference is represented by both ages 
and school grade. The powers and functions that are liveliest at any one 
time in the child's development are indicated in two ways : In the first 
place, a phrase describing any particular nascency is placed under the 
scale of years as nearly as possible at its proper time ; secondly, as an 
added suggestion of the relation of nascencies to years, the rise of a 
few of them is represented by swelling curves that play through the 
scale of ages. Those selected for the curves are not necessarily the 
most important ones. They are chosen because they fit fairly well into 
the divisions of the school grades. Two or three of the dotted lines 
indicate how certain of these nascencies correspond not at all to the 
conventional divisions of school life. At the bottom of the chart are 
placed words for the ways in which the happenings in human nature 
directly influence the methods and materials that are properly employed in 
character training. 

At the top are a few phrases and words indicating the ways in which 
the under currents have formed successive norms or centers or nuclei 
of ethical emphasis. We may briefly summarize in words the purport 
of the chart, confining ourselves, however artificially, to the usual divisions 
of the school. 

Kindergarten period, age three to six, inclusive. — Three mental traits 
are in the ascendency at this time, and rather more lively in their function- 
ing than they have been or will be again. They are (a) the free play 
of fancy, (b) spontaneous play impulse, (c) the dramatic impulse backed 
up by the instinct of imitation. The history of the kindergarten is a 
record of the building of a school so nearly in accordance with the laws 
of child life that it stands out as the brightest spot in educational practice. 
The kindergarten, freed from "gifts," perhaps does more moral work than 
does the teaching of any successive set of years. The educational leaders 
and prophets of this period have found in the powers developing at this 
stage, a door of entrance into the innermost parts of the child's conscious- 
ness. The purpose is not to entertain the little ones. On the contrary 
each day's activities may be used in making a definite moral appeal through 
the play of the finer sentiments. This is the time above all others for 
vitalizing the feelings of trust, confidence, kindliness and cooperation 
that are so essential to the moral life. There is no period more fruitful 
for the awakening pi a fine appreciation of the powers that lie behind 
things and of meanings that transcend the mental grasp. 

Ethical stress at this time may well be upon such central themes as 
ways of helpfulness, love and kindness, cooperation, and nature's care for 
her children. In this time of fairyland and fancy the babe is reaching 

25 



26 



CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 



out into the lives of animals, dolls, and folks. Selfishness is giving place 
to kindness. To enter sympathetically into the lives of others, is not this 
the secret of the moral life? 

The primary and intermediate periods, six to eleven, inclusive. — There 
are so many characteristics of the mentality of children common to the 
next two periods that it is well to discuss them together. It is v^rorth 
noticing in passing that the varied studies so far made are in agreement 
that the year six belongs still to the baby consciousness. It is usually 
treated as a kindergarten year in the practice of the schools. 

During the stretch of years from seven to eleven there are three 
mental functions that are distinctly not developing. The imagination 
is not so delicate. The mind acquires a somewhat tougher fibre. Prac- 
tical interests immediately begin to crowd out the fanciful ones. The 
mind is a little less permeable to direct moral appeals. 

Secondly, there is little improvement in the power to reason in 
abstract terms. A score of studies prove this. To expect children to 
reason out why they should behave in a certain way is usually a waste 
of energy. Their moral assents to the precepts that are diligently 
ground into them are apt to be attended with very little depth of conviction. 

Thirdly, there is little improvement in the sense of moral responsibility. 
The turning point for this awakening, like that of the ability to reason in 
abstract terms, is on the average at twelve or fourteen with a rapid 
increment thereafter. The lightness with which a child at this stage 
carries the burden of a sense of duty is no matter for concern or anxiety. 
If only those methods are employed which are in tune with the things 
that are happening, there will be, on the whole, as much progress not in 
the keenness of the moral sense but in the foundations of morality as at 
any other period. The distinction should be borne in mind at this period 
between cheerful non-moralities and obliquities. 

The case is entirely hopeful if we turn to inquire after the things 
that are coming out into their full fruition during the period from seven 
to eleven. Two things among others are coming out into full activity. 

a. Thinking_ in terms of objects. — Children are interested in the world 
of concrete things and like to observe, collect, manipulate, and discourse 
about them. _ All the senses are hungry. The motor life is bouyant and 
seeking all kinds of outlets for full expression. 

b. Memory for detail. — Pupils at this age are more efficient in the re- 
tention and recall of unassociated detail than at any later period. 

The above two considerations taken together point the way to the 
right methods and materials of instruction. It is the time to furnish 
the mind richly with choice bits of history and all those concrete facts 
that are to be food for later reflection. It is the time for becoming 
familiar with choice selections for memorizing, for knowing at first hand 
the world's artists and their schools, for storing away the details of 
history and geography. The moral training at this time may be as suc- 
cessful as that in the kindergarten if teachers will seize upon this passion 
for detail and use works of art and the facts of the various school sub- 
jects as doors of entrance into a rich understanding. The secret of 
right moral training is to utilize those occupations and projects that are 
in their very nature saturated with moral significance. 

The period nine to eleven considered separately. — The first distinguish- 
ing mark of this period as against the last is thoughtfulness in "terms 
of objects as against satisfaction from sensory contacts. In addition, the 
vigorous_ upmsh of the gang spirit and other traits show the dawning 
of a social impulse. 

Both these periods are extremely individualistic. The latter half, 
along with the beginnings of the group instinct, is marked by what Kirk- 



THE child's development 27 

Patrick has designated "competitive socialization." It is the time above 
all others for the beginning of team work in games, of group activity 
like the Scout club, interests and enthusiasms which lead rapidly towards 
conscience. 

This is a time above all others for the use of biography as a means 
of moral appeal. The gang spirit together with an instinctive admiration 
of the leader, particularly if he be of the red-blooded type, is the back- 
ground of a genuine hero-worshiping stage. The child's interest in 
personalities sometimes amounts to reverence and may be used by the 
teacher, if she so inclines, to awaken in him a lively enthusiasm amountmg 
to ambition and even idealism. 

The high school period considered as a whole, twelve to eighteen. — 
There is usually a sharp transition at twelve or soon after in the ability 
to think in terms of ideas. The power to think logically and with insight 
develops rapidly. Miss Kate Gordon shows in her Educational Psychology 
that high school pupils are able on the average to solve logical problems 
and syllogisms with an efficiency about equal to that of adults. There 
are many studies leading toward the same conclusion. This power should 
be utilized in tempting high school students to throw the weight of their 
entire mentality, on occasion, into moral thoughtfulness. Just as there 
is a habit among teachers to try more or less in vain during the primary 
and grammar grades to analyze the reasons for right conduct, there is 
the complementary mistake of a prevalent timidity on the part of high^ 
school teachers in inducting young men and women into thoughtful in-"' 
sight and vigorous expression of their judgments of men and movements. 
The giggling, jostling stage play that so often characterizes young men 
and women and which is only a thin curtain of disguise thrown around the 
deeper lying selfhood that is forming during this period has been too much 
pampered by educators. The pupils themselves in their giddiest moments 
are hungry for more serious occupation and respect those who in turn 
treat their deeper selves with respect. 

A second mark of the adolescent period is the birth of a new sense, 
of a new selfhood. There is a profound uprush of instinctive life that 
sweeps the youth rapidly on beyond childhood ways into a new world of 
meanings. These sometimes burst with the suddenness of a new awaken- 
ing. The high school curriculum should be rich in direct though artistic 
appeals to the new selfhood to come forth and experience its full birth. 
What youth can escape the life-giving quality in Emerson's Self Reliance, 
Carlyle's Sartor Resartus or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, or can 
withstand the challenge of the life of a Roosevelt, a Newton, an Elizabeth 
Fry, and other heroes and heroines of peace and war? The period should 
not be passed by without the result that most young men and women 
should be called out into a high resolve to live and achieve. 

A third characteristic of the high school period as a whole is the 
awakening of the social impulses. If all goes well, the individualism 
and the social indifference of the earlier years are broken down. They 
give place to a lively appreciation of other persons. The youth now 
enters freely into the life of others and finds pleasure in companionship. 
The way is open for entrance into the social inheritances of the race 
and the problems of the present time. High schools are already imbued 
with a congenial atmosphere of sociability. They should proceed to 
capitalize the stock of social impulses and focalize them into a world citizen- 
ship. Is it not an indication of a weakness of heart in this respect that 
sociology rarely appears in the high school course of study? Should 
not every young man and woman before graduating from the "Peoples 
College" gain a thoughtful understanding of the laws of society? 

The junior high school, twelve to fourteen, inclusive. — The early half 



28 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

of the high school period is marked by the impulsive awakening of the new 
personality. , It is full of uncertainty and instability but of blind striving. 
There are to the impatient parent and teacher symptoms at this time 
of moral ill health marked by fitfulness and explosiveness. This stage has 
been called by Hall the "moral interregnum." One suspects that the moral 
difficulties are due in part to pedagogical unwisdom. The right regimen 
would seem to be : 

a. More projects calling out active self-expression rather than passive 
attitudes of receptivity in class instruction. 

b. More sympathy and confidence on the part of elders for the vacil- 
lating and unsteady mental feet of the new selfhood. They may well 
be as tender in this respect as toward the uncertain steps of a toddling 
child. 

c. More chances for buoyant self-expression through the biography 
of heroes and the tales of adventures. 

d. More frankness of recognition that young men and young women 
are not still the children that they once were. Respect the new selfhood 
and it will rise in dignity to meet the expectation. 

e. More calling out of the latent powers that are beginning to function 
and helping focalize them upon what seem to be big enterprises, be it in 
athletics or missionary enthusiasm, so that the Dr. Jekylls and Mr. Hydes 
and all the other selfhood struggling underneath shall come forth and 
fuse their interests in dominant purposes. Cast out the evil with the 
good. Keep the youth busy and interested. The junior high school, as 
a whole, may well become a sort of overgrown Scout camp. 

The senior high school, fifteen to seventeen, inclusive. — This is the 
period of the realization of the prophecies of the junior high school. 
A half dozen or more studies of this period have shown there is, under 
normal conditions, an awakening of a higher sense of self and that there 
is an instinctive wish to attach the inner personality to other persons, 
groups and causes. The years sixteen and seventeen on the average 
are those of most frequent awakenings. The school might well try to 
make of these years a time of self -discovery through the vocation, through 
music, through athletics, through science, through the arts and through 
idealisms close akin to religion, if they are not really religion. 

After the period of awakening and choosing there should remain a 
year of apprenticeship in citizenship before graduation. 

For a further discussion of periods of growth which underlie possible 
improvements in character training, the reader is referred to the various 
excellent books now available on this question. Among these may be 
named Kirpatrick, The Individual in the Making, Weigle, Pupil and 
Teacher, Athearn, The Church School, Forbush, Guidebook to Childhood, 
and Hall, Adolescence. 

It w^ill be necessary only to call attention to the centers of ethical 
emphasis that are catalogued along the top of the chart accompanying 
this chapter. They should stand out high in the thought of the teacher 
above the work of the various years as objects to be realized and also 
as points of vantage from which to direct the details of the school. 

We shall not enter upon the doubtful question of the advisability of 
a high school course in ethics. That will depend upon the definite build- 
ing up through the work of the school of a body of disciplined insight 
that will make such a course profitable and upon the good fortune of a 
high school faculty if it should have an artist teacher who could make 
ethical problems and situations live in the hearts of the students. 



CHAPTER VI 

A MORAL CURRICULUM WITH A PROGRESSIVE PLAN, A DRIVE, 

AND A GOAL 

The prevailing state of mind with respect to character education has 
been too much that of moving by no especial plan towards nowhere in 
particular. In the early days of this inquiry, the writer sent out an in- 
quiry to hundreds of school people in the state of Iowa, to every county, 
city and town — containing eleven questions. The first three were the 
following : 

1. Have you a moral end or objective in training your children as 
definite as your intellectual objective which you seek to realize? 

2. What is that objective? 

3. What means do you employ to realize it? The answers came in 
quite generously. Only one city and one county in the state confessed 
to having a real plan and they were described as indefinite and unorganized. 
The composite picture of the character training situation is not unfairly 
presented by the statement of one superintendent who said: 

"The joke is on me. Although I have said often that the whole 
aim of education is a moral aim, I have never stopped to tell myself 
what that aim is nor how to reach it." 

In the preceding chapters we have described the end or ends of character 
training and have shown some of the roads that clearly lead in that 
direction. In this chapter we propose to inquire how the regular curriculum 
of the school may, if it so chooses, be a powerful agency in character 
development. 

In turning our attention to the curriculum and the various school 
activities that have grown up around it, there are several basic considera- 
tions that should be borne in mind. 

1. The moral program here presented is not superadded to the regular 
curriculum. — The plan proposed in this chapter is in no sense a burden 
to be superimposed upon an already heavy course of study. It leaves 
the school activities intact. It means only to enrich them by giving such 
temper and content as will bend them in the direction of character training. 
The writer- has found by two extended investigations, one under the 
auspices of the Religious Education Association and the other undertaken 
privately, that teachers are eager to do something in the way of character 
training but seem helpless to know how to accomplish it. Occasionally 
a response came like a cry for help. The usual supposition is that one 
must turn aside from the curriculum and school activities and find some 
other way for character training — must save an interval of time in the 
too busy day to wedge in an added duty. Could such a means and such 
freedom be found it would in all likelihood defeat its own. purposes. 
Morality is not a preachment plus an emotional response but a way of 
acting a self-realization, of entering into the life of others, of moving 
towards better adjustments. Instead of talking about moral qualities 
it is the business^ of the teacher to see that the spirit of morality dom- 
inates the entire life of the school. 

2. The school studies as they stand have moral content. — The school 
subjects in the old-fashioned way of chopping off units of intellectual and 
informational food are certainly at variance with the character education 
program. Fortunately the once hard boundaries of subjects have been 
almost completely broken down at present by correlations, project methods, 

29 



30 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

and socialized recitations. They are no longer recognized as real units at 
all but only as centers or norms of interest in focusing some of the 
essential facts of experience and in bringing about certain life adjustments. 
The question of the educational value of the different subjects will 
not be discussed in this report. We are concerned here with a far more 
fundamental consideration. If the teacher is occupied consciously and 
definitely with the direction of the whole tenor of her school towards 
true moral objectives, everything she teaches will both consciously and 
unconsciously help in reaching the true goal. 

3. An illustration from the fourth grade curriculum. — The rich char- 
acter content of all the usual school subjects is symbolized in the accom- 
panying chart. On the left are catalogued the subjects of the average 
course of study for the fourth grade. It is a composite of the Baltimore, 
the Speyer school and other standard curricula. On the right of the page 
are the objectives we have set out as ends of character training. 

If one should ask what school subjects rightly handled by a wide 
awake teacher could contribute to any single phase of life preparation as, 
for example, the vocation, it is clear that lines run from essentially all 
of them towards that point. Literature can hardly avoid the thrift 
writings of Franklin; geography has a deal of its solid framework in 
the story of products and occupations and their influence on national life. 
Physiology and hygiene are vitalized by picturing the effect of physical 
wholeness upon success and so on through the entire list. 

On the other hand, to the inquiry what moral ends are contributed to 
by a single school subject like geography, the answer is, there is hardly 
one of vthem that is not directly served by that subject. This is indicated 
by the spread of lines from the left to the right on the chart. Further 
detailed description is needless. It is clear that each school subject is 
fruitful for essentially every moral objective and vice versa. Our program 
is to vitalize the already existing curricula and give easy access to sup- 
plementary materials that can be drawn upon as desired. 

A similar story would be told were one to draw a chart of the rela- 
tionship of extra-curricular activities and character ends. That can be 
done in imagination by the reader. It is evident that a course in char- 
acter education chiefly gives moral point, purpose, meaning and content 
to the existing educational agencies. 

4. The moral curriculum must busy itself with problems, projects, and 
actual situations rather than with "virtues." — The virtues will take care 
of themselves if children learn to live well together, meeting situations 
as they arise in the midst of vitalizing occupations. It will have to be 
acknowledged that definite conscious attempts at nurturing the virtues 
become more or less artificial and have not met with hearty acceptance 
in the schools. The normal impulses must be planted in the muscles of 
children rather than pass smoothly across the lips. When mouthed, the . 
virtues become trite; when constantly reiterated they lose their freshness; 
when rubbed into the surface of consciousness they cause irritation. 

The names of the virtues should finally of course symbolize the most 
familiar and vital points in the child's experience. They are the very 
essence of the packed wisdom of the race, the very essence of conscious- 
ness. But the child's moral muscles, like those of his body, are made for 
use rather than for analysis. The program herein outlined keeps the 
child's interests and attention on the outward meaningful situations, not 
inwardly upon himself. 

5. A bird's-eye view of project-problem m-ethods for character train- 
ing. — For the sake of clearness and brevity, suggestions of projects and 
problems to enrich the school curriculum are presented in the accompanying 
chart. It is not meant to be complete. From the extended literature on 




o 
o 

X 
u 
in 



i».. 



GRADE HI1I£ 



GRADE TEB 



GRADE ELEVEB 



GRADE TWELVE ^ 



Entertainment of 
visiting tecim 

Ooqpaxa 
Ideal Aotual 
plan use oi 
fox a time 
day In dajr 
Coamlttee report oi 
•Self Culture 

Through the Vaoa* 

tlon." Griggs 



Beroea of eolenoe 
Pasteur, and othert 



Atbletlos 

Committee report 
on eoae martyrs 
and heroes of 
solenoe 



Athletics 

"Self Reliance" 
Emerson, Carlyle 
and others 
Overcoming obsta- 
cles - a group 
of examples 
Roosevelt etc. 



Athletics 
"What Men Live By" 
Cabot. Work, play 
love, worship 
Dse of Iielsuze 
Soott and other 
classics on saae 
theme 



Scout emd Campflre 
Act out the 
courtesies of a 
Roman and a Hebrew 
home 



Rewrite several of 

Aesop's fables to 

fit present social 

conditions 

Forms of salutation 

in all countries 



Dramatize "The 
Melting Pot" 
Junior-Senior 
banquet as model 
of social forms 

"The Culti- 
vated Man" Eliot 
Class study 
Friendship, Emer- 
son, Tennyson 
and others 



Impersonate classes 
in American life 
When duties clash 
what? "loyalty to 
Loyalty" Royoe 



Select a delegate 
or officer by the 
election methods 
of 1789 

Project a plan of 
student government 



Dramatiie "The Man 
Without a Counrty" 
Make a bibliography 
and card catalogue 
of the civics 
library 

Drskmatize a session 
of Lincoln's cab- 
inet 



The vow of citizen- 
ship 

Catalogue the 
organizations in 
your neighbor- 
hood. "Amer- 
icanization" 
Ruassll and Wadw 
"The Soul of 
Democracy" Griggs 
.Distinguish be- 
tween a democracy 
and a republic 



Draft a oonstlttttiont 

fox the family of 

nations 

"American Ideals yet; 

to be Attained" 

Cabot 



Who malces our 
currency? 
How many miles of 
turnpike will one 
dreadnaught build 
Individual inven- 
tion (a) camp 
utensil (b) auto 
or agricultural 
applianos 



Credit buying - how 
much Interest does 
the debtor pay 
Get a merchant to 
help class estimate 
"overhead" in a 
store. Specific 
studies on value 
of system in bus- 
iness. The value 
of truth in adver- 
tising. The money 
value of courtesy 



Visit and study 
bank 

Vocational self 
measurement - 
use a stande^d 
scale 

Forming vocation 
clubs. See Davis 



Self Measurement 
Bee Hyde 
A display of 
vocations - Seo 
Muensterberg 
Visiting vocations 
and classifying 
them 

Partial apprentice- 
ship in vocation 
as part of school 
work 



Controlled exper- 
iment in cross 
fertilization 
Committee report 
on "The Meaning 
of Infancy" Fiske 



"Improvement of 
the Human Plant" 
Burbank 

"Carrying on" the 
present race prob- 
lem 



"Mutation" de 

Vries 

■The Blood of 

the Hat ion" Jordan 

Committee report 
on xeoe improve- 
ment 

"Call of the 
Twentieth Century" 
Jordan 



Make several family 

budgets 

Collect dascxiptiona, 

of home life of 

great Americans 

^Genetics" Walter 



Pick out and dxaw 
three best pieces 
of architecture in 
the neighborhood 
Devise, finance 
and carry out a 
plan for the yearly 
purchase of a work 
of art 

How to treat an 
enemy - collect 
examples 



Origin and meaning 
of forms of civil- 
ity 

Con^are mxisic, 
poetry and archi- 
tecture 

A study of "The 
Art of Truth 
Speaking* 

Biographies of 
Great Americans 



.The "Over soul" 
Emerson - colleot 
similar senti- 
ments. Write 
a companion piece 
to a winter poem 
Collect pieces 
of music and 
painting with 
theme of "Over- 
soul" Make a 
model or design 
observing laws of 

■ structure 



"The Soul of 
America" Stanton 
Colt 



Projects related to the tradition contained in 
various subjects 



"Through Nature to 
God" Fiske ~ 
Devise plan fox the 
art improvement of 
youx sohoolhouse 

Dramatize "The 
Christmas Carol 



CHART III 



BUOQESTIOHS OF PROJECTS ASD FRQBLEHS TO CBRZOB A CHARACTER TRAXBIHa OURRXCaLOlC 
This outlino presupposes that all eubjeots be taugbt in the light of their 



% OBJECTIVES 



EIBDERCARTES 



Making a bit of 
Fairyland 
Health Falriea 
Health choree 



Gaoee requiring 
group movements 
Making plane and 
specifications for 
something to be 
built by Grade VI 



Prepare and act a 

scene which teaches 

neatness 

A Health T&i.xj 

^^eont 



0RADE TER£E 



Clean~up oluba 
Plan isolation 
of case of infec-' 
tioua disease 
at home 

Pageant emphasis- 
ing proper eating 
and sleeping 
Sunshine club to 
promote happiness 
In offn group 



Garden Club 
Plan a surprise 
party for Grade V 



Report to Board of 
Health breeding 
places of flies 
and moscjaitos 



oontributlon to life 



Campaign for extor- 
aination of fliee 
Committees plan & 
HfbbX-end oaop 



Maks ioelses refrlg-^Jif J^J^^Mhit 
erator for caxe of^ gJTpiS? )•*"'"* 



OaiDE SEVEH 



Kathenatiot of the 
eportlng page 
Construct a min- 
iature stage and 
act out a scene 
with paper figures 
Soulptux* proj'ot 



-ORADE EIGHT 



Write a school 

creed 

Hold a tournament 

Training table 

Uanoge measurins 
and weighing of 
school chi'ldrea 
Study physical 
excellence of 
Greeks 



GRADE HUE 

Entertainment of 
Tielting team 

Ooopaxe 
Ideal Actual 

plan use of 

for a time 

day In day 

Oommittee report oi 
•Self Culture 

Through the Vaoa* 

tion." Qrlggs 



GRADE ELEVEI 



Athletloa 

"Self Reliance' 
i^erson. Carlyle 
and others 
Overoomlng obsta- 
cles - a group 
of exaomlee 
Roosevelt etc. 



GRADE TWELVE T 



Athletics 
"Vhat Hen Lire By" 
Cabot. Work, play 
Ion, worship 
Use of Leisure 
Qoott and other 
olaseloe oa ease 
theme 



LIFE IB THE GROUP 



Games for getting 

acquainted 

Doll party acting 



Winter feeding of 
birds 

Courtesy ganes show- 
ing customs in 
other lands 
Acting home and 
street scenes to 
show courtesy 
Proper distribution 
of pkg of varied 
kinds of confections 



Making a bird res- 
taurant and support 
ing it collectively 
Acting story to 
entertain other 
grades 

Two groups act out 
settlement of a 
quarrel 
Present story in 
scenes, tableaus 



Playing teacher 

in eettllng a 

quarrel 

Plan a ThankeglV' 

ing dinner for 

newsboys 



Claee la a party 
of explorers e.g. 
De Soto's 
Organize to ao- 
oompllsh their 
pxirpose and to 
live together 
Class land aa a 
colony - group 
eolutlon of prob- 



Livlng with Indians 
neighbors 
Solve thsir 
problem - avoid 
their mistake 
Font and Indian 
tribe and land an 
English colony and 
live together 



Scouts or "Cuba" 
Building something 
for Grade I in 
accord with their 
specifications 
Journey Geography 
Christmas in other 
lands 



Soout and Campfire 
Organise a Round 
Table for seek- 
ing "quests" 
Adopting a family 



Soout and cao^flre 
Plan and carry out 
■ isaon for drill 
and review which 
win interest anl 
help the class 
Publish a sohcol 



Scout and Campfire 
Act cut the 
ocurteeies of a 
Roman and a Hebrew 
home 



Rewrite several of 
Aesop's fables to 
fit preuent social 

Dditlons 
Forma of salutatlor 
In all countries 



Dramatise "Th«' 
Melting Pot" 
Junior-Ssnicr 
banquet as model 
of aooial forms 

"The Cultl- 
vatod Man" Eliot 
Class study 
rrlendehlp, tnex- 
lon, Tennyson 
and others 



Impersonate classes 
in imerloaa life 
inien duties clash 
what? "Loyalty to 
Loyalty" Royoc 



CIVIC REUTIOBS 



Stories of UTashinf 
ton's and Lincoln 
boyhood 

Songe and stories of; . ^ . „„, 

Amellcan patriots /Make badges to wear 
•^ Feb 12 and 23 



ECOBOUIC RELATIONS 
AID VOCATIOB 



Bird houses 



Starting a group 
account 

Collection of seeds 
from the harvest 
Make an Indian 
Corn Husk doll 
Cooperative pur- 
chase of bird houses 
from Grade VII 



Make a doll house 

Doll's tea party 

etc. 

Dramatize house, 

mother and helpful 

children 



APPRECIATIOH OF 
BEAUTY 



Finding nature's 
favorite colors 
and combinations 
of color 
Feeding birds 
Arranging flowers 
in a vase 



MASTERY OF 
TRADITION 



Child patriots of 

fiance 

Design decorations 

for the table for 

party Feb. 22 



Make booklet of 
history of first 
settlers in your 
community 
Origin of the flag 



Form two Indian 



"A Message to Gar- 
cia" 

Washington's 
Journey to the 
Ohio 

Construct a class 
flag 

When Lincoln's 
humor eaved'the 
day 



Establish a post- 

offloe 

Draw up an oath 

of alleglanoe 

Draw plans and 

make relief map 

of Valley Forge 



Vork out the story 

of the builders of 

your comiainity or: 

city 

Construct & gove.*n- 

ment on a desert 

island, make lawi 



and sstablish 
social customs and 
rules of conduct 



Select a delegate 
or offloer by the 
election nothods 
of 1789 

Project a plan of 
student government 



Dramatise "The Man 
Without a CouMty" 
Uake a bibliography 
and card catalogue 
of the civics 
library 

Dramatise a session 
of Lincoln's cab- 
inet 



TOW of oitisen 

Catalogue the 
organitaticns in 
your neighbor- 
hood. "Amer- 
iotinlzatlon" 
lessen and Vodw 
"The Soul of 
Democracy" Griggs 
Distinguish be- 
tween a domooracy 
and a republic 



Draft a constltntloai 
for the family of 

' ions 
'American Ideals yet 



Starting a savings 
account 

Plan entertainment 
to raiee money for 
group account 
Cooperative build- 
ing of bird houses 



How many people 
help bring tlie 
bread to the 
table 
Organized barter 



Plan and earn 
money for dinner 
for adopted family 
A day properly 
divided for work 
and play 



A stomp collection 
Estimate profits 
on home garden 



Establish a school 
bank 

Flan a picnic or 
camp dinner to 
come within set 
price 

Ineect enemies oi 
trees, a collect- 
ion 



A school expendi- 
ture card to deter- 
mine waste In 
eohool materials 
CoiApute waste is 
your district from 
.weathering of 
machinery 
Estimate in detail 
the cost of some 
product - labor's 
share - capital's 
share 



Plan and oarry o^it 
a "cooperative 
store" for the 
school 

Goneervaticn of 
trees 

Shop visitation 
Organize an em- 
ployer 'e council 
and labor union 
and settle dispute 
Conetruot a soheae 
of tax for revenae 



Who makes our 
currency? 
How many miles of 
turnpike will one 
dreadnought build 
Individual Inven- 
tion (a) camp 
utensil (b) auto 
or agricultural 
appliance 



Credit buying - hew 
mioh interest does 
the debtor pay 

a merchant to 
help claoe oatlmate 
"overhead" in a 
store. Specif 



Tbe value 
of truth in adver- 
tising. The money 
value of courteoy 



Visit and study 
bank 

Vocational self 
measurement - 
use a standard 
scale 

Forming vocation 
clubs. See Davis 



Self Measurement 

Bee Byde 

A display of 

atlons - S«» 
Uuenaterberg 
Visiting vocations 
and olaaslfylng 
them 

Partial apprentice-. 
ship la vooation 
as part of school 
work 



Mothering on orphan 
animal 

Observation trip 
to locate insect 
borne e 



Build an Eskimo 

house 

Booklet of animal 

families compiled 

by claae 

Locate and observe 

animal houses 



Estimate the 

work of a pair 

of birds in one 

day's feeding of 

young 

Make a winter 

home for pets 

How to set a table 



Collect pictures 
of homes and 
children in other 
lands 

Estimate mother's 
work in homw 
Book of bird 
families 



Construct a model 
kitchen 

FlcwerSf winds, and 
bees, working to- 
gether in fertil- 
ization 



Observations on 
heredity In stock 
and poultry breed- 
ing 

Design a hall 
clock 

A study of Madonnas 
Indian Homes 



Trace the evolu- 
tion of homes, 
and make models 
of enough examples 
to form a series 
Dramatize King 
Arthur stories 



Design from plos^^ic 
materials a home 
and environment 
Service to huoan'.ty 
from plant breeding 
Burbank 



Controlled exper- 
iment in cross 
fertilisation 
Committee report 
on "The Meaning 
of Infancy" Fl»ke 



"Improvement of 
the Human Plant" 
Burbank 

"Currying on" the 
present race prob- 
lem 



Bature'e color 
work 

a. Autumn - color 
combination - ob- 
servation and col- 
lect ion of corre- 
sponding colors 
for permanent ex- 
hibit 



Find the age of a 
tree 

Collection of 
seeds for spring 
planting 
Chart locating 
most beautiful 
shade trees in 
oommunity 



Find conditions 
of strength and 
weakness in 
plants 

Planting for the 
future, "Apple 
Tree John" 
Leaf forms and 
colors (a col- 
lection) 



Carefully recorded 



one bird's nest 

Find a winter 

Bceae - rearrange 

80 aa to put in a 

rood 

Hake a model of a 

church interior 



Make collections of 
shells and stones 
Herbarium 
Change a summer 
scene into a winter 



Living for a week 
"in training" 
Collect pictures 
of Greek Heroes 
^n sculpture 



Create beautiful 

designs 

A pageant of 

knighthood 

Collection of 

pictures of 

knights 



vice, Invention tito 
Make a plan for 
pork 



of architecture la 
the neigh torhood 
Devise, finance 
and oarry out a 
plan for the yearly 
purchase of a work 
of art 

mv to treat an 
enemy - oolleot 
examples 



ity 

Compare music, 
poetry and archi- 
tecture 

A study of "The 
Art of Truth 
Speaking" 



Representation of* 
Santa Claus and 
his hone 
Flag ceremonies 



Indian projects 
Make an Indian 
canoe etc 
Make furniture 
like that In Lin- 
coln's home 
Book of Xfflos songs 



Devise a gome to 
be played with 
choice sayingfl 
of Lincoln 
Collect stories 
about protecting 
the colors 
-Plan and give a 
Xmos program lor 
Grade I 



Dramatize incidents Collect ejorlos 

in lives of Wash- fro"" ^'^'^ *"»! °" 

ington and Lincoln Pilgxla pageants 

Pioneer life projects; 

Make model of 

cabin showing the 

first Thanksgiving 

in face of haxd- 

ehipa 



Give on exhibition 
of spartan gymnaa- 
tlc training 
Indian woodcraft 



Living pictures 
of knights, 
Raleigh eto 
A book of Indian 
traditions of 
your state 
Journey geograph y 



History of Chrletffl. 

customs 

Pantomime of herces 

f the Civil War 
Modele and plctuies 
of prairies schocnr 
ers, stags coachc 



"Mutation" de 

Vrles 

■The Blood of 

the Hatlon" Jordan 

Committee report 

on race Improve- 

ment 

"Call of the 

Twentieth Century" 

Jordan 

-The "Ofersoul" 
Emexeoo - oolleot 
similar santl- 
ments. Write 
a ccnqpanicn piece 
to a winter poem 
Cclleot plecea 
of music and 
painting with 
theme of "Over- 
aoul" Make a 
model or design 
obaexTlDg laws of 

" structure 

"The Soul of 
Amerioaf Stanton 
Colt 



Hoke several family 

budgets 

Colleot desorlptlonsi 
f home life of 
;reat Americans 
Oenetlos" Walter 



Through Mature to 
Ood" Fiske 
Devise plan for the 
t Improvement of 
your sohoolhouse 



Projects related to the tradition contained In 
various subjects 



A MORAL CURRICULUM 



31 



the subject, and from our own experience, a few score are presented for 
illustration. 

The vertical columns stand roughly for the school years from the 
kindergarten to the end of the High School course. At the left of the 
chart are some of the objectives to be kept in mind as ends of all school 
activities. The projects and problems are somewhat arbitrarily grouped 
in the horizontal columns in accordance with their objectives. Seven 
headings are chosen which do not correspond to the eleven defined in 
chapter two. A good project leads out in many directions. There are 
fundamental kinships among the objectives. Industrial and economic 
relations and vocation, for these reasons, are thrown together. Certain 
essential objectives, like reverence and creative activity, do not appear 
in the chart. To honor them with separate horizontal columns in the 
chart would be to discredit them, for they represent the spirit and purpose 
of all school life. 

There are many omissions and misrepresentations of which such a 
chart is necessarily guilty. It is too rigid. There is in reality much 
freedom of movement of the projects as to years in the curriculum 
and as to objectives they subserve. The chart fails to lift out into suf- 
ficient perspective the significance for character training of opening and 
closing days, and the sacred days of the calendar, like Thanksgiving, 
Christmas and Easter and the great birthdays. All these times and seasons, 
when rightly observed, are intensely formative of character. They offer 
occasions, prepared for by long series of projects, when the moral leaders 
of the race and their ideals can be brought very near to the hearts of 
children. The moral value of the ordinary school subjects has too much 
fallen out of sight in the chart. All these things will, however, be sup- 
plied by imagination of the reader as he feel his way through the 
suggestive catalogue of projects. Indeed, the reader who can work 
through the display with kindly eyes will see it as quite a plastic affair, 
symbolizing the unified and organic life of the entire school, movinig 
through the years toward a definite set of ends. Each teacher or school 
system will add or substract, stress or deprecate, as he glances through 
the program, in the particular way determined by personal taste, locality, 
peculiarities of city or country residence, prescribed books used as texts, 
and many other factors. 

Two things perhaps need be said about the relation of these projects 
to the regular curriculum. The two observations cut in opposite direc- 
tions. In the first place, the project program assumes that the regular 
school subjects are being, taught, as prescribed by educational custom, 
and that each school subject be taught in the light of its relation to life 
within and without the school. When the several studies and occupations 
are thoroughly vitalized by a true teacher, they become, in and for 
themselves, sets of projects. In such an event the chart exists as a set 
of hints to the wise for edification and stimulation. On the other hand, 
to the extent that the school regime is mechanical and formal, the project- 
problem program is radically antagonistic to it. The formal subjects, 
for example, like reading, writing, spelling, drawing, grammatical ex- 
pression, are far more skillfully and economically mastered when taught 
in connection with meaningful activities, as educational practice is richly 
demonstrating. Conduct is becoming circumspect, and the moral impulses 
being made fine and strong, whenever pupils are busy in mind and muscle 
with a worthy enterprise. 

There are two or three further points that may require particular 
stress. 

6. Every good project stands for a zvidening stream of moral value. 

The following out of a single project as, for instance, the building and 



32 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

furnishing of a doll's house leads in the direction of appreciation of 
family lite, of social proprieties, of vocation, of initiative, of civic relations 
and essentially all the other vital objectives. Or, again, a study of 
Indian life in w^hich the children are for the time Red Men of the 
forest, gets hold of essentially every fundamental personal and social 
problem. It has radiating lines of influence for the rest of that year 
and for succeeding years as virell. A study of the "virtues" tempts one 
to cage up each of them in set days or weeks. 

7. The cumulative force of various sets of related projects. — Each 
set of projects can be made to move with change and variety rather than 
with repitition and monotony from year to year until they gain high 
momentum. The chart indicates this progressive movement in the Christ- 
mas symbols, all the way from the baby fancy of Santa Claus on to some 
great presentation like the Christmas Carol, dramatized on the stage by the 
high school students themselves. Another instance is found in the events 
connected with the life of Lincoln. They proceed from instances and 
anecdotal items finally by recurring cycles into an understanding of the 
weightier matters of government. It is desirous that teachers, working 
cooperatively and by the aid of superintendents and principals who can 
see the school program in its entirety, should avoid the constant repetition 
and reiterations in celebrating the important days that come to pall upon 
the pupils and breed indifference. 

It is clear that the progressive plan here outlined moves with cumula- 
tive force, so that the entire program throws its energies towards the 
attainment of each and every desired end. This fact will become even 
more' evident in the next chapter. 



CHAPTER VII 

MOVING PROGRESSIVELY TOWARDS THE OBJECTIVE 

In the last chapter it was evident that the cumulative force of the 
entire curriculum could be directed towards the realization of the essen- 
tial occupations and attitudes that constitute the good person. We shall 
now come into closer quarters with the question by indicating more par- 
ticularly what can be done. The problem in its completeness would be to 
follow through the school life and point out how each of the seven or 
eleven objectives is reached through the curricular and extra curricular 
activities of each part of each year's program. That would be a pleasant 
but a long journey upon which to enter It will be sufficient perhaps to 
take but two instances out of the greater number and let a detailed presen- 
tation of each of these stand as types of the others. We shall choose 
for illustration one of the easiest topics — Preparation for Civic Relations, 
and one of the most difficult — Preparation for life in the Family, and let 
that suffice. 

A. MOVING TOWARDS PREPARATION FOR CIVIC RELATIONS 

There is no day of any year that is not preparing for civic relations. 
The school, as we have outHned it, is a community of intreacting person- 
alities, who play the game according to mutually accepted rules. The 
entire school group is getting ready for citizenship if only the activities 
of each day are good in and for themselves. The moving, growing 
democracy of today will be the democracy of tomorrow. 

Each pupil, furthermore, is doing and studying topics that lead him 
definitely in one or another direction. They inviolably tend to fix the 
unity of the life of today and tomorrow. By wisely selecting the occupa- 
tions and projects, and directing the activities of pupils, the outcome 
can, within limits, be anticipated. Is it not the desirable thing that the 
school should predispose the sympathies and ideals of the children? 
If it does so, is it not the case of humanity consciously directing its own 
destiny? Too much direction would be deadening; too little would be 
scattering to the winds. For the sake of brevity and clearness a chart 
is presented herewith. It indicates several connected lines of interest 
running quite through the school life, from the earliest years to the close, 
which bear upon citizenship. Related sorts of interest are bracketed and 
are designated by words and phrases at the center of the brackets— study 
of civics, life in the group, clubs and societies, biography, a study of 
unifying agencies, and the like. By a little browsing through the chart, 
the drama it opens up will be evident enough. The reader will find 
himself supplying a score of extra items that have driving power in the 
direction of citizenship. The entire force of the school can clearly be 
directed into this channel. 

The growing custom is a good one of providing for frequent civic 
excursions to Citj'- Hall, Courthouse, repositories of public records and 
other places of civic interest, and of having various public officials talk 
with the students. These men open up to them an inside view of their 
duties and what their vocations mean to them and to the community. 
It is strange that these sources of deliverance from pupils' blindnesses 
have not been drawn upon more freely. It has grown to be a maxim 
of character education but too little practiced that offences against society 
are usually due to blindness and ignorance rather than to perversity of 
nature. To have the pupils to become acquainted by actual contact with 
the State and its machinery, and by a lively act of imagination picture 

3.^ 



34 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

its progress is essentially equivalent to interest in citizenship. It is well 
to form as many contracts as possible between the pupil and the things that 
are around him that are pulsing with life, rather than have civics limited 
to bookish tasks. 

B. PREPARATION FOR LIFE IN THE FAMILY 

This is the most important of all the school problems and the most 
baffling. In the midst of the biases and prejudices that surround the topic, 
so much is as clear as need be: if the teacher should have deep down a 
wish to lead the child toward ideal love, happy marriage and a successful 
parenthood, that wish will both unconsciously and consciously be realizing 
itself in the spirit and emphasis with which she meets the child and the 
common school tasks. She will be selecting those materials of instruction 
lying all around her, leading towards that end. To be successful in 
carrying out her wish, she need not say perhaps a single word about 
sex, nor wade through the facts of sex physiology and sex hygiene. On 
the mooted question of the direct teaching of sex in the schools, we 
shall not enter. The arguments for and against it are too familiar to all. 
There is, however, a deal of common ground that represents safe pro- 
cedure from the standpoint of either type of bias. 

1. Secure the service of a woman either inside or outside the school 
who will be a wise counselor for the girls, and discover an expert 
among the men as an advisor for the boys. 

2. Have occasionally intimate assembly talks with the boys as a group, 
and other talks to girls as a group by advisors or by teachers who are 
equip^ped in mind and heart for so important and delicate a task. 

3. Call in occasionally a great interpreter of life from the outside who 
will lift the students out of themselves into a higher level of interest and 
outlook. It is the gift of great, noble souls to be able to lift the level 
of spiritual living of those who sometimes live in the nooks and crannies 
and blind alleys of experience. 

4. Arrange for confidential talks with individual students as occasion 
demands. The mischief connected with sex instruction usually attaches 
to wholesale methods, giving to the majority of students the advice 
and information for which they are least adapted or prepared. 

No matter what one's prejudice, there are a few precepts that seem 
important as guides in this delicate undertaking. 

a. Approach the question of sex usually from above rather than from 
below, i.e., from ideal considerations rather than from practical or factual 
ones. The sex instruction must have a spirit, a momentum, a drive, an 
atmosphere that impels the life in the right direction. Occasionally the 
appeal is from the standpoint of art, sometimes from that of science, some- 
times in connection with the problems of race improvement. 

h. Avoid filling the minds with imagery that is wholly apart from a 
vigorous aesthetic or moral appeal. The rudeness and crudeness oi 
physiology and hygiene in this respect have usually overlooked the ideo- 
motor laws of mental life in accordance with which all the pictures that 
are held before the mind are unconsciously passing over into some type 
of expression. 

c. Respect the feelings of delicacy and modesty of all refined person- 
alities. Modesty is one of the finest products of human culture and 
should not be brushed away with ruthless speech. 

d. Let knowledge do its proper work. When, in connection with the 
profound insights into biological progress, for example, one is able to 
picture possible race improvement through right breeding, it becomes as 
impossible for the young man to despoil the human breed through foolish- 



XI XII 



Elementary sociology 



ies Student government 



law 

Dramatization of 
i Man without a Country " 



*«The Sower" 



ri Civic 

r= Relations 



of the Twentieth Century 



Examination of records 
Press 



League of Nations 



Civic Relations 



Grade 


Kindergarten I 


II 


III 


IV 


V 


VI 


VII 


VIII 


IX 


X 


XI 


XII 



Rules of living together 



Case civics 



Play societies . 



A doll society 



America 



— V 

Study of civics 



Civics as schools study Elementary sociology 



Clean-up club 



V 

Clubs and^socielties 



Mosquito brigades Scouts Literary societies Student government 

\ with parliamentary law 



'^v Dramatization of 

Indian Life A settler's\;abin Cooperative buying A desert island society "The Man without a Country " 

X Y^'T ^ 

Projfects\ 
Star Spangled^Qanner ^s ^^ "The Sower" 

^"x:^ ^o: ■- 



PatriotiiMnusic Jind rnovies ^ v ^ > ^ 
Dramas^ >ictures^ etc . ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 



r'r^^-^^^iCivic 

=0-^-0^: Relations 



Lincoln 



Biograp'hy 



Franklin 



Literature , ' 



^Edison / ^' 



Pasteur 



'Ant and Grasshopper" 



"Hats Of!" "Man with a Hoe" ,' / Gettysburg Address Call of the Twentieth Century 

' Visits and'excursions 



"Raggy-Lug" Animal societies 

Barter Roads Canals 



City Hall Court House . All occupations Factories Examination of records 

Commerce Press 



Study of unifying agencies 
^yy j Language 



Institutions 



In story and legend Animal societies Homes Neighborhood clubs Church State League of Nations 

Chart IV. Showing the Progressive Movement of School Studies and Activities in the Direction of Preparation for Civic Relations 



Grade 


Kindergarten 


I 


II 


III 


IV 


V 


VI 


VII 


VIII 


IX 


X 


XI 


XII 



Drama 


"The Lost Sheep" 


Music 


"Sweet and Low" 


Poetry 


"Rock-a-by Baby" 


Sculpture 


"Her Son" 


Paintings 


"Two Families" 


Fiction 


"Snow-white and Rose-fed" 


Dance 


Folk Dance 



"Romeo and Juliet" Drama 

"Dedication" Music 

"Celestial Love" Poetry 

Adapted to the various grades, continue thru-out curriculum Venus of Milo Sculpture 

"Beatrice" Paintings 

"Adam Bede" Fiction 

Spanish Dance Dance 



— ^ — V 

The Love Theme in Art 



Care of 



doll clothes 



Garden 



projects 



Preparing foods 



\ N^"" 

Providing^for Home 



Cooperative buying 



Family budgets 






Observes family Plant fertilization 

kinships 



/^ 



^ip- 



'<!' 

"y^ 



p" 



Her€»dity 



Cross jbreeding 

' /' 

' / ' 

Homes and Families ' 



Dolls and Bird homes 

doll families 



Homes around 
the world 



Care of pets 



Courtesies 



Order 



Plan a house 



Life in the group 



Mothers' 



'Day 



Kallikak 



Race improvement 



Evolution of Families and homes 



Knight-errantry Brother-Sister 



Neighbor! iness 



Chart V. Showing the Progressive Movement of School Studies and Activities in the Direction of Preparation for Family RelaUon. 



MOVING TOWARDS THE OBJECTIVE 35 

ness as it would be for him to destroy a highly developed breed of animals 
or variety of plants. 

e. Approach the question usually on the positive side rather than on the 
negative. It is doubtless true that lowly souls, who are dwarfed, bent and 
deformed, must be frightened by the thoughts of disease and death, but 
such procedure is rather poor pedagogical tactics for cultivated boys and 
girls. They should be stimulated to feel the pull of loves and admirations, 
rather than feel the sting of fear and remorse. 

/. The strongest appeal is through the arts. Indeed the arts are 
essentially the expression of the idealized love relations. Remove the love 
theme from fiction, for instance, and it has become by the act seriously 
impoverished, if not almost destroyed. The arts exist as the idealizing 
agencies of life that is in danger of groveling. It is a strange anachron- 
ism and anastigmatism that the arts should have found so little place 
in the school curriculum. Every high school surely should have a course 
in the History of Art and Art Appreciation. 

g. Show how ideal love has come only through self control. With the 
Arthurian legends and with the vigorous appeal of literature and science, 
the pupil's mind can be filled with the ideals of chivalry involving the 
dignity of perfect control. 

h. Open up all the vents of suppressed desires through the full and 
free expression of normal social and love activities. The moral evils of 
sex, we are coming to see, are the result of suppressed desires. When 
pupils are found fighting temptations, they should be set busy with art, 
including fiction, the dance, music, and social activities, until they ex- 
perience the sanity and wholeness that come through expulsive emotions. 

With these precepts and truisms in mind, looking through the accom- 
panying chart, one can readily see that the school is quite rich in studies, 
devices and activities that move in the direction of preparation for true 
ideals of love and marriage, and for right participation in the family, 
which has been and should still be the garden in which the finer virtues 
flourish. 

It takes but a little imagination on the part of the reader to see how 
all the other objectives, in addition to the two we have described, are the 
theme and subject of the entire curriculum. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CURRICULUM BY YEARS 

It is the business of leaders in Character Education finally to map 
out a character education program by years and in detail for the work 
of the separate grades. As was clear in the preceding two chapters the 
program must be so definite that the schools know where they are going 
and by what steps they will arrive. No essential links can be missing. 
To build such a program will be a heroic undertaking, as great as that 
which the Committee of Ten or the Committee of Twelve faced in their 
labor on the regular curriculum. 

The collaborators, who submit this report, with a pardonable optimism, 
embarked upon such an undertaking. They feel that they have made 
distinct progress towards the building of such a detailed program. The 
necessary research and the accumulation of bodies of material have 
grown to such proportion, however^ that it must take weeks, if not 
months, with skilled readers and assistants to complete the project. 

The work has involved : (a) an inquiry into all the essential types of 
courses of study to learn what shall be the subject matter each year that 
needs enriching in a character education program, (b) To discover such 
projects and materials as are consistent, both with the prevailing curricula 
and with the objectives of character training, (c) To accumulate and 
judge as to its worth essentially all of the available publications that prom- 
ise assistance, (d) To set up an inquiry among thousands of school 
people into the materials and aids that have practically proven useful in 
such concrete instances that the result of its use can be specifically 
described, (e) To classify the tested and tried materials and place them 
in a form for convenient reference for the use of teachers. 

Through the cooperation of publishers and teachers so vast a fund of 
material has been accumulated that it has proven to be entirely out of 
the question to complete it for this report. 

The object the committee has held in view is suggested by the chart 
accompanying this chapter. Grade IV is taken as a type. It is proposed 
to prepare thirteen or more similar charts— at least one for each grade — 
that should put a teacher easily in touch with the best character training 
materials for her grade in both curricular and extra curricular activities. 

The chart is practically self-explanatory. It is proposed to furnish a 
classified bibliography of supplementary material for each grade. The first 
number of each reference in the chart indicates the numerical place of 
that reference in the bibliography for that year, and the second number, 
the page on which the citation occurs. It is worthy of note that the plan 
as presented, consistent with the spirit of this entire report, emphasizes 
projects primarily, and incidentally the moral attitudes involved. The 
selection of projects for the different years will vary greatly. It may be 
necessary ultimately to construct an alternative chart or two for each 
grade. The projects we have chosen for the fourth grade are in accord- 
ance with a widespread usage in the schools. A valuable feature is the 
manner in which projects interweave during the progress of the year so 
that more work is done and so that the same moral attitudes are empha- 
sized from different angles. 

In the fourth year, for example, the Early Settlers project emphasizes 
certain moral attitudes that are similar to those called out by the Thanks- 
giving season. 

If such a diagram and accompanying bibliography were easily at the 
disposal of every teacher who would like to begin the enrichment of her 
36 



n History] 

3770 McKinley St., Washington, D. C. 
in Two or More Books. C = Comic Selection 


Geography 


Nature Study, 

Physiology and 

Hygiene 


Civics 


Plays and 
Games 


10.14:53.211 


10.6:14.212 
11.3:152.42 


5.16:29.63 


309.125:60.200: 
[91 .25 :13 .40] 


[19.31:140.542] 


16.2:132.412 
[12.4.9.22] 


43 .6 :551 .970 
[13 .7 :26 .72] 


24 .10 :65 .320 
[19.41:37.210] 


111.15:29.661: 

12.14:22.60: 

[4.9:11.390] 


[10.4:165.391] 


9.20:133.421: 
[12.25:19.30] 


10.5:172.830* 


12.17:43.75 


[42.20:13.521:] 
[12.9:25.360] 


13.25:141.424: 
[9.4:10.24] 


9.30:25.312: 
[14 .4 :2 .219] 


12.7:490.500: 
[11.8:30.251] 


19.5:120.30 


[17.3:15.24:] 
9.3:26.49 


10.4:25.360 
[11.7:112.413] 


[113.71:41.75] 
10.7:121.462 


[12.4:152.130:] 
19.16:130.30 


13.5:20.250 


[912.403:12.27] 


19.7:12.251: 
42.30:101.750 


14.2:36.5 


14.4:19.360: 
[5.2:212.650:] 
10.3:9.96 


[62.74:123.241] 
[5.4:10.14] 


[16.9:311.791] 


[116.50:41.3:] 
15.7:4.19 


[5.3:919.741] 


[16.41:122.35:] 
9.4:13.120 


14.36:21.92: 
[15.3:316.990] 


313.59:42.97: 
[15.3:7.24] 


16 .4 :20 .266 : 
[190.132:21.34] 


[9.3:120.25] 


[42.9:360.792] 


[14.30:57.92:] 
[3 .1 :22 .60] 


[12.11:23.92:] 
10.7:140.651 


[41.27:52.73] 




—- 









GRADE IV 

Suggested Materials for the Enrichment of the Regular Curriculum [Beginning American History] 

Chart Issued In 1922 by the CHARACTER EDUCATION INSTITUTION 3770 McKinley St., Washington, D. C. 
Key-Numbers = Book and Page in Accompanying Bibliography. Bracketed Numbers Show That Same Reference Occurs in Two or More Books. C = Comic Selection 



Situation 

or 

Project 



Moral 
Attitude 



Opening Days 
(Work) 



(Cooperation) 



Health 



Early Settlers 
(1) (Adventure) 



(2) Fortitude 



Changing Seasons 
Admiration 
(3) Thrift 



(4) Neighborliness 



Armistice Day 

(a) Service 
(5) Bravery 



(b) 



(6) 



Thanksgiving 
(7) Sharing 



References for "Opening Exercises," "Assembly" and Entertainments 



Recitations 
and Readings 



20.6:47.201; 
[16 .3 :22 .60] 



14.3:29.230: 
[12.9:10.30] 



15.20:4.60 



[19.30:140.19: 
[10.8:23.48] 



9.30:C120.9 



90.500:43.51: 
[12.3:29.4] 



18.7:41.150: 
[8 .2 .CI 16 .31] 



14.9:33.24: 
[10.8:11.16] 



41.5:121.10 



|37 .9 :128 .43 :] 
[51.12:101.2] 



Dialogues and 
Dramatizations 



48.12:13.90: 
[10.3:131.17] 



12.161:4.18 



91 .101 :16 .26 
[9-117:C44.10] 



[371.69:123.10: 
[14.42:19.60] 



29.132:121.12: 
30.127:19.40: 
10.3:21.80 



19 .27 :12 .30 : 
[143.800:1.7] 



13.94:10.161 
[12 .4 :91 .32) 



101.461:49.302 



19.56:131.58: 
[12 .3 :22 .60] 



91 .3 :14 .69 : 
10.4:120.80 



Selections for 
Memorizing 



62 .20 :14 .93 : 
[10.3:92.103] 



14.3:27.91: 

[52 .25 :14 .54] 



[20.37:3.42] 



13.27:19.87 



42.31:15.35: 
[19 .4 :C22 .75] 



13.27:19.64: 
10.3:21.40 



121.91:364.211 
[19.3:41.60] 



[11.41:47.201:] 
[12.5:43.71] 



[10.5:42.302] 



112.46:15.92: 
[13.3:921.30] 



Problems and 
Forum Discussion 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



"Current Events" 
Local Situations 



Music 



113.30 



15.4: 
12.3 



29.7: 
52.20 



12.9 



29.4: 
13.2 



12.7 



19.5 



130.50: 
21.12 



25.9: 
19.3 



11.4: 
5.2: 
1.27 



Art 
Appreciation 



47.201 



48.327: 
22.60 



38.400: 
19.30 



43.163 



83 .212 : 
26.46 



14.290 



26.309 



41 .95 : 
13.61 



47.211: 
22.51 



41 .20 : 

12.95: 

121.10 



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Chart VI. Index to Supplementary Character-Training Material 



Literature and 
Biography 


History and 
Biography 


Gfeography 


Nature Study, 

Physiology and 

Hygiene 


Civics 


Plays and 
Games 


191.27:111.423 
[16.4:21.70] 


13.4:12.190: 
[12.5:9.120] 


10.14:53.211 


10.6:14.212 
11 .3 :152 .42 


5.16:29.63 


309.125:60.200: 
[91.25:13.40] 


[15.3:43.71] 


[12.3:43.72] 
131.50:22.60 


[19.31:140.542] 


16.2:132.412 

[12.4.9.22] 


43.6:551.970 
[13.7:26.72] 


24.10:65.320 
[19.41:37.210] 


12.5:27.201: 
19.3:23.95: 
[15.4:10.60] 


[151.49:29:81] 


111.15:29.661: 

12.14:22.60: 

[4.9:11.390] 


[10.4:165.391] 


9.20:133.421: 
[12.25:19.30] 


10.5:172.830' 


14.5:43.80 
12.2:26.47 


11 .6 :121 .950 
[13.2:120.49] 


12.17:43.75 


[42.20:13.521:] 
[12.9:25.360] 


13.25:141.424: 

[9.4:10.24] 


9.30:25.312: 
[14.4:2.219] 


[51.8:231.575:] 
[19.8:28.61] 


36.41:19.371: 
[4.2:10.74] 


12.7:490.500: 
[11.8:30.251] 


19.5:120.30 


[17.3:15.24:] 
9.3:26.49 


10.4:25.360 
[11.7:112.413] 


[161.83:48.207:] 
14.9:16.72 


[137.2:47.201] 
[19.5:121.394] 


[113.71:41.75] 
10.7:121.462 


[12.4:152.130:] 
19.16:130.30 


13.5:20.250 


[912.403:12.27] 


[13.4:121.175:] 
[13.10:23.91] 


[131.74:95.110] 


19.7:12.251: 
42.30:101.750 


14.2:36.5 


14.4:19.360: 
[5.2:212.650:] 
10.3:9.96 


[62.74:123.241] 
[5.4:10.14] 


15.3:33.95 
[112.101:22.73:] 
10.9:12.35 


[42.10:36.52:] 
[21.9:39.501] 


[16.9:311.791] 


[116.50:41.3:] 
15.7:4.19 


[5.3:919.741] 


[16.41:122.35:] 
9.4:13.120 


[10.5:47.201:] 
[16.3:22.60] 


[92.8:37.491] 


14.36:21.92: 
[15.3:316.990] 


313.59:42.97: 

[15.3:7.24] 


16.4:20.266: 
[190.132:21.34] 


[9.3:120.25] 


14 .2 :48 .212 


33.15:48.205: 
[17.4:30.42] 


[42.9:360.792] 


[14 .30 :57 .92 :] 
[3 .1 :22 .60] 


[12.11:23.92:] 
10.7:140.651 


[41.27:52.73] 










^^^__^ 





THE CURRICULUM BY YEARS d/ 

school activities, she would hardly find an excuse for not starting directly 
to reach out for available aids. 

A few points of interest for the future prosecution of character educa- 
tion research have grown out of our experiences. We are convinced 
that the richest source for determining the best materials will come from 
the schools themselves. With a nation-wide inquiry, it ought to be pos- 
sible to bring together a well-tried body of standard materials. Experts 
at the art of writing for children are not so accurate always in judging 
good food for them as are teacher-artists v/ho know by experience what 
devices and aids have proven profitable to specific children at definite times 
in their experience and in describable ways. 

Through the misunderstanding of a superintendent we were acci- 
dentally brought into touch with the confidences of a group of high-school 
students as to what biographies, poems, pictures, etc., had proven to them 
really useful in doing character training work. The student papers have 
the quality of freshness and sincerity that suggest a new mine of wealth 
that might well be worked. 

The bibliography of material for classroom use which was submitted 
as a part of the Iowa plan can be borrowed from the Character Education 
Institution for two weeks' study, by those who need it for the develop- 
ment of character education work in public schools. 



CHAPTER PX 

MEASUREMENTS OF PROGRESS AND ATTAINMENT 

We have seen that it is possible for the schools to be very clear in 
their thought of the ends to be achieved, and of specific ways of reaching 
them. Equally important is the question of estimating the successes and 
failures in having each pupil reach the desired objectives. The present 
chapter is a study in character-rating. 

Valuation of character, far more important than the rating of intel- 
ligence, must be faced on its own ground. We have ascertained, as have 
other students, that intellectual skills are not an index of moral health. 

For five years the chairman of the Iowa Collaborators has been 
conducting studies, by the help of graduate students, on this problem. 
The attempts of some other students have been studied and tested, 
usually with the net result that they hardly as yet meet the requirements 
of mental rating scales, namely, that they should be usuable and valid, 
and that they should establish objective standards, or norms, for estimat- 
ing proficiency or attainment. Various methods of attacking the problem 
have been devised, with a view to overcoming the difficulties. 

On the whole, the most hopeful set of character-rating charts is that 
presented herewith. Much credit for its formulation and for the exacting 
statistical work connected therewith is due Mr. George H. Mendenhall. 
During the past two and one-half years he has been working with the 
chairman during his post-graduate career at improving, testing and stand- 
ardizing the scales — looking toward this report. That work is still in 
progress. 

Most effort, to the present, has been expended upon the scale for 
high-school pupils as shown in the attached sheet. While probably not 
in its final form, it has been found to be practicable and profitable to 
pupils and teachers. The most important single step in advance was in 
allowing pupils more than one judgment concerning each of the thirty 
qualities of character, in distributing 10 points among the gradations 
of each. 

While we have not, as yet, been successful in establishing norms or 
standards for the estimate of character, the ratings are accurate enough 
to be useful. There are many lines of evidence for this fact: (a) There 
is a surprisingly high degree of constancy in the average of plus and 
of minus estimates for different schools and for various groups. (&) The 
mean variation of the plus and minus averages is small, showing they 
are not haphazard, (c) If a group of students rate themselves at a 
given time and are later required to repeat the performance, there is a 
reasonably high correlation between the first and second ratings. That 
depends, of course, upon the pains and conscientiousness of the procedure. 
In one instance the correlation was .92. (d) There is a reasonably high 
correlation between the pupil's rating of himself and the teacher's rating 
of him. They range from zero correlations, where there is evidence 
of haste and carelessness, to .90 in the instance in which pupils and 
teachers are really doing their best. 

The exercise in occasional self-rating is a valuable one to students. 
They seem to enter into it cheerfully. Many confessions have been col- 
lected of its usefulness. It calls attention to points essential to character 
about which they had never thought. There is a profit and satisfaction 
in getting a straight look at themselves which is often the prerequisite 
to taking themselves in hand. 

Character-rating is found to be a challenge to teachers : to treat 

38 



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Name Age . . Sex. . 

City Street Address 

School Year 

Nationality of Father of Mother 

Occupation of Father Age of Father Mother. 

Number of children in family No. older than you. . . . 

Church connection or preference Member. . . 

Your favorite games and pastimes 



Your favorite books. 



Your supreme ambition if any. 



Your choice of occupation if any. 



Address communications to; 



SELF-MEASUREMENT SCALE 

Where do you stand in the human scale, as compared with 
your fellows? Are you average, above average, or below? 
What are your weaknesses and what are your points of strength? 
Suppose you take yourself in hand and try to find out. 

We have learned to rate or judge our livestock and our 
crops and we find that it pays. The business man rates every 
article he handles, he knows what stock he has on hand and 
what it is worth. He finds that it pays. Teachers are learning 
to test out the various "skills" of the pupils in spelling, number 
work, reading, etc., and they find that it pays. 

All this rating is in the right direction. A little clearhead- 
edness and thoughtfulness can do wonders in individual and 
group progress. The most important of all rating is self-rating 
in matters of character. That rests with you. You and you 
alone can estimate your own traits of character for you know 
them as no one else does. 

The Self-Measurement Scale is intended to help you rate 
yourself that you may find in what points you are strong and 
in what points you may be weak. Examine it carefully and you 
will find it suggestive and helpful in getting a correct view of 
yourself. It will pay. 

You will notice that the Scale is divided into thirty sections 
called Qualities, each one being essential in character formation. 
Toward the right, each Quality is divided into four gradations 
that denote the desirable characteristics of the Quality, ranging 
from "fair," through "good," "excellent" to "best possible." 
Toward the left there are also four gradations, but these 
denote the undesirable characteristics of the Quality, ranging 
from "lacking," through "poor," "very poor," to "worst pos- 
sible." These gradations are intended to move by even steps 
from the center toward the right and toward the left. Words 
and phrases are used to describe what each gradation stands 
for. The fourth gradations are supposed to be the limit each 
way and will therefore be used very sparingly if at all. 

Notice this interesting fact : as you glance over the grada- 
tions of a Quality, several of them will seem to describe your 



character. Some will seem to fit your case distinctly and clearly 
while others will be faint and barely recognized. To meet this 
situation you are given ten points to be distributed among 
the eight gradations. Where the gradation fits you most dis- 
tinctly, place there the largest number of the ten points, where 
it is not so distinct, place a smaller number, etc., until the ten 
points are all used. Use all of the ten points but use only ten. 

For instance let us suppose that Deportment were one of 
the Qualities on which you were going to grade yourself. Your 
school grades perhaps have been good and you would think that 
you deserve 4 points in "plus two." Occasionally you may have 
been very agreeable and obedient and would give yourself 1 in 
"plus three." Your general behaviour at home may be average 
and you think 1 point in "plus one" would be about right. On 
the other hand suppose that sometimes you have a tendency 
to be disobedient and in justice deserve 1 point in "minus one." 
Again, let us suppose when you are out with the "crowd" or with 
"the gang" you are likely to "turn loose" and think that you 
ought to have two points in "minus two" and sometipies you 
have a strong inclination to "be bad" and deserve 1 point in 
"minus three." Your record might appear about as follows : 

1 2 1 DEPORTMENT 14 1 

Another person might grade himself 7 points in "plus two" 
and 3 in "minus one" or vice versa. 

You would not want the photographer to make a distorted 
picture of you. In rating yourself try to make the picture as 
true as possible. You will then be able to locate the weak 
spots and can begin to correct and strengthen them. You will 
also locate your strong traits of character and can use them in 
making your life what you would like to have it be. You will 
find that it will pay. 

Use ten and only ten points. When you have finished add 
the number of points under each gradation and the sum of the 
eight gradations should be 300. 



Age Sex. 

Street Address 



Name 

City 

School Year 

Nationality of Father of Mother 

Occupation of Father Age of Father. . . .Mother. 

Number of children in family No. older than you. . . . 

Church connection or preference Member. . , 

Your favorite games and pastimes 



Your favorite books. 



Your supreme ambition if any. 



Your choice of occupation if any. 



Address communications to: 



A SELF-MEASUREMENT SCALE FOR CHILDREN, 
GRADES V TO VIII 

There are twenty-two qualities listed in the center of the scale 
with three gradations on each side. On the right side the grada- 
tions are plus or favorable for the development of the right 
kind of character and on the left side they are minus or unfavor- 
able — hindrances to the right development of character. Most 
of us find that we have both favorable and hindering conditions 
in our lives. 

To rate yourself, take up the qualities one at a time. Allow 
yourself ten points for each one. Examine the six gradations 
and find which ones seem to describe you as you know yourself, 
then distribute the ten points among those gradations, placing 
the largest number of points where the description seems to fit 
you best and a smaller number for the other gradations until 
you have distributed the ten points. If only one gradation 
seems to fit you place the whole ten points there, but if several 
gradations seem to fit your case distribute the ten points among 
them. 

Take up each of the twenty-two qualities in the same way and 
when you have finished add up the number in each of the six 
gradations and place the totals at the bottom of the scale. Then 
take the totals in the second gradations and multiply them by 
two and the totals in the third gradations and multiply them by 
three and add the products to the totals in the first gradations 
and you have your total score, those on the left your total minus 
score, and those on the right your total plus score. 

In rating yourself be honest and mark yourself as you know 
yourself or the rating will be practically useless. 



Name Age Sex 

City • Date 

School Grade 

Number of children in family No. older than you. , 

Occupation of Father , 

What do you expect to do when you get through school ? , 



Who is the best person you have ever known or read about ? , 
Why do you think this person is good 



PROGRESS AND ATTAINMENT 39 

pupils as individuals and not as groups; to take a more discriminating 
attitude toward the individual pupil, rather than to consider him roughly 
as this or that boy or girl; to centre the weight of his interest in those 
fundamental impulses and attitudes of pupils that make for personality 
rather than in the skills and proficiencies of thought that lead to high 
intelligence-rating. The self-analysis of the pupil is a complicated snap- 
shot, not always objectively accurate, of the ins and outs, the ups and 
downs, the tendencies and strivings of an interesting life. It is, capable 
of diverse readings, always useful. We have found, for instance, that 
if a hundred students who have already rated themselves are required 
later to pick out the seven most important moral qualities of the thirty 
and the seven least important, they will have rated themselves more than 
twice as high in the first seven qualities as in the last. By so much are 
their confessions a true picture of their ethical attitudes. 

One of the chief benefits is the natural common ground the exercise 
furnishes for exchange of opinion of pupil and the teacher who is pro- 
fessedly a helper. Whenever there arise discrepancies between the pupil's 
judgment of himself and the teacher's estimate of him, the causes are to 
be sought. To rectify such judgments has been found to be a pleasant 
and profitable undertaking. Usually there is a deal of similarity. We 
have found it to be the pretty substantial rule that teachers rate pupils 
slightly higher than the pupils rate themselves. There is the slight 
sprinkling of bluffers and self-deceivers whose assurance is to be softened, 
and the larger showing of the self-distrustful who need stimulation, and 
who are always grateful for a bit of friendly encouragement. 

A scale for the grades V to VIII, inclusive, has been devised and 
is presented herewith. It is much simplified as to number of qualities, 
and attempts only three gradations above and below the standard. It is 
found that these grades can use the simplified and modified scale as 
readily as the high-school students can theirs. There is the same degree 
of constancy in the plus and minus averages. The mean variations are 
less, indicating greater constancy among the younger pupils. There is 
even higher correlation also in these grades than in the high school of 
teachers' and pupils' ratings. It has been ascertained that this scale can 
be used as low down as grade IV. The pupils stumble, however, in 
understanding the distribution of the ten points, and it is accordingly 
practicable to use it only from the Sth grade upward. 

We have devised two tests for the lower grades, the one to be used 
among the kindergarten and primary children, and the second in the grades 
2 to 4. Copies of these are presented herewith. 

A sufficiently full description of these tests is found in the instructions 
to teachers and need not be repeated. It should be borne in mind that the 
attempt with the little folk just as with the older pupils is to turn their 
attention invariably outward upon the things they ought to do and the 
attitude they should assume to other folk and the situations they face 
rather than to tempt them in the direction of self-analysis. There is an 
important suggestive value in the questions and required answers. The 
pupil is brought of necessity to focalize upon the niceties of behavior 
and upon the habits that form the warp and woof of his moral life. 

It seems reasonable to expect that ultimately the practice will become 
well established by which teachers, parents, and pupils working together, 
shall see to it that each child's behavior is moving in the direction of a 
well-ordered life. It is coming now to be a well-established educational 
dogma that it is the school's responsibility to know that pupils are acquir- 
ing the right intellectual skills. Is it not equally the responsibility of 
education to know that the child is attaining reasonably correct standards 
of moral conduct? 



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40 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

There have been some attempts in the direction of character rating. 
President W. DeWitt Hyde devised a scale for the measurement of ten 
qualities and published a booklet entitled Self -Measurement (Huebsch). 
Mr. Milton Fairchild has devised a practicable scale and described it in a 
pamphlet entitled Nuclei of Character (Character Education Institution). 
A significant contribution in this direction is made by S. M. Upton 
and C. F. Chassell, A Scale for Measuring the Importance of Habits of 
Good Citisenship. (Teachers' College Record, Vol. 20, pp. 36-65.) 



A CHARACTER TEST FOR PRIMARY CHILDREN 

This test is intended, first, to help the teacher to get an idea 
of the character habits of the child; second, to suggest to the 
pupil the right things to do and the things he ought not to do; 
third, to aid the teacher, parents, and pupil working together to 
form the right kind of character habits in the child. 

The test should be kept at the teacher's desk and used soon 
after the opening of school each school day for two weeks. It 
should be given only as often as thought necessary to keep the 
suggestions before the pupils. When the teacher is convinced 
that the proper habits are fairly well formed, she should dis- 
continue it. 

If possible, get the parents to cooperate by taking a copy of 
the scale and checking the pupil at home and by verifying the 
checking of the pupil. Emphasize the necessity of truthfulness 
in order to make the test of any benefit. 

Name Age Sex 

City School Grade. . . . 

Number of children in the family 

Number older than you 

Occupation of father 

Number of rooms in your home 

Are you a member of a Sunday School class ? 

Signature of parent with remarks as to the correctness or in- 
correctness of the checking and of observed benefits. \ . 



Address communications to : 

(a) 



A CHARACTER TEST FOR PRIMARY 
CHILDREN 

1. Did you sleep 10 hours or more last night? 

2. Did you take ten or more long, deep breaths 
yesterday ? 

3. Did you wash your hands before each meal 
yesterday ? 

4. Did you wash your teeth yesterday? 

5. Did you spend 30 minutes or more in the open 
air yesterday? 

6. Did you put away your wraps when you came 
home from school yesterday ? 

7. Did you arrange your clothes last night so that 
they would be easy to find and put on this 
morning ? 

8. Did you take a bath yesterday ? 

9. Did you go straight home from school yes- 
terday ? 

10. Did you' try to keep from soiling or tearing 
your clothes yesterday? 

11. Did you step aside to let anyone pass you yes- 
terday, on the sidewalks, in the halls, or at 
doors ? 

12. Do you have a savings account or bank?... 

13. Did you earn and save anything yesterday? 

14. Did you do anything yesterday that you ought 
not to have done? 

16. Did you share anything (apple, candy, nuts, 
cake, etc.) with brothers, sisters, or playmates 
yesterday ? 

17. Did you cry yesterday ? 

18. Did you complain when asked to do anything 
yesterday 

19. Did you quit playing or pout yesterday when 
you could not have your own way? 

20. Did you quarrel with anyone yesterday? 

21. Did you go away from home yesterday without 
telling anyone where you went ? 

22. Did you bite your finger nails or put pencil in 
your mouth yesterday ? 



(b) 



c 
o 


3 




3 






3 






— 


— 





— 




— 


— 


— 





A CHARACTER TEST FOR CHILDREN, GRADES HI 

AND IV 

This test is intended to help the teacher to gain a knowledge 
and an understanding of the strong and weak points in the per- 
sonal character of the pupil and to suggest to him the things he 
ought to do and the things he ought not to do, and in this way 
aid him in forming the right kind of habits. 

The test should be given as often as thought necessary to keep 
the suggestions before the pupil until the teacher is convinced 
that the right habits are fairly well established. It may then be 
discontinued and be given only occasionally as a measure of 
the permanency of the habits formed. If possible enlist the co- 
operation of the parents. 

Name Age Sex 

City School Grade 

Number of children in the family 

Number older than you 

Occupation of your father 

Number of rooms in your home 

Are you a member of Sunday School class ? 



Signature of parent with estimates as to correctness or incor- 
rectness of answers of pupil, and observations of benefit derived 



Address communications to : 

(c) 



A CHARACTER TEST FOR CHILDREN, GRADES HI AND IV 

1. Did you do your health chores yesterday? 

a. Wash your teeth ? 

b. Wash your hands before each meal ? 

c. Take a bath? 

d. Spend 30 minutes or more in the open air ? 

e. Take some special exercises ? 

2. Did you waste any time yesterday when you ought to have been 
at work ? 

3. What did you do yesterday to help someone at home? 

4. What did you do yesterday to help someone without being asked? 

5. Were you tardy at school or late at meals yesterday? 

6. What did you see yesterday that was really beautiful? 

7. What good music did you hear yesterday? 

8. Did you hurt anyone or make anyone cry yesterday? 

9. How much did you earn yesterday ? 

10. Did you quit playing or pout yesterday when you could not have 
your own way? 

11. What did you have to hunt yesterday because it was not put 
away in its proper place ? 

12. Did you step aside to let someone pass you yesterday on the side- 
walks, in the halls, or at doors? 

13. Did you plan last night something to do today? 

14. Did you do anything wrong yesterday 

Did you own up to it? Did you try to make it right? 

15. Did you promise to do anything yesterday that you did not do? 

16. What did you read yesterday just because you wanted to? 

17. What did you hear or see yesterday that was funny? 

18. Did you refuse to do anything yesterday that someone wanted 
you to because you thought it was wrong? 

19. Did you quarrel with anyone yesterday ? 

20. What did any of your playmates do yesterday that you thought 
was wrong ? 

21. Why did you think it was wrong? 

22. Are there any of your playmates that do not like you? 

23. Why don't they like you ? , 

24. What did you do after school yesterday ? 

25. Did you try to keep cheerful yesterday ? 

id) 



CHAPTER X 

THE TEACHER AND HER PREPARATION 

1. The Teacher as a Moral Leader. — The success of any course in 
character training rests in large measure with the teacher, her personality, 
her preparation, and , her skill as an educational artist. This is the 
consideration of first importance. With the right teacher alive in mind 
and pure in heart, the question of keeping the flame of morality burning 
while the necessary tasks of the school day are performed will solve 
itself. Developing childhood is the growing point in the life of the race. 
Whatever the teacher puts into children is the surest of all investments 
in race improvement. As the home, in preforming the habits and tastes 
of children, is the heart of humanity, so the school, in its conscious 
direction of that development through wise teachers, is the living, directing 
agency in human evolution. The teacher is becoming progressively the 
prophet-leader of her kind. She must be the incarnation of the best 
traditions of the race — its thought, its tastes and its purposes. For the 
state to select its finest personalities as the teachers of its children, 
and to pour into their minds and hearts, through long and careful prepara- 
tion, the richest of its treasures, that act is the conscious thought of 
humanity finding itself in the direction of its fulfillment. The increasing 
interest during recent years in the character training program is the 
purposeful will directing itself towards the production of the best type 
of manhood and womanhood. The success of the venture will depend 
largely upon the selection and training of teachers as the preformers 
of character during the plastic years of infancy. 

2. Some Qualifications of the Teacher. — The ideal teacher has been so 
picturesquely portrayed in literature and so faithfully described in educa- 
tional literature that there is no need of trying to add to the vividness 
or accuracy of the picture. A few observations are required that are 
in keying with this report. There are at least four points worthy of 
emphasis. 

In the first place it is necessary, in connection with the sort of school 
and curriculum we have presented, that the teacher be a very human 
person. While knowing books as tools of knowledge, she need not be 
afflicted with bookishness. Although living up faithfully to a course 
of study that hundreds of persons have devised and millions should 
respect, she may escape through every hour of her career the deadness 
and heaviness of slavery to its prescriptions. We have stressed much 
the need of preserving constantly the vital interest and the entire integrity 
of the personality of pupils. That is not possible unless the teacher 
herself is a vital and vitalizing personality. 

Secondly, it is needful that the teacher be companionable. The ex- 
pectancy that a teacher be chiefly a rigid disciplinarian, a purveyor of 
wisdom, a prescriber of tasks — an unholy inheritance from ancient autoc- 
racies — is the arch enemy of educational wholesomeness. Moral impulses, 
like diseases and humor, are infectious. Under those circumstances there 
is too little chance for the contagion. It is entirely possible for a teacher 
to subordinate herself to the wishes and interests of her pupils and to 
enjoy their companionship, at the same time being a true leader, finding 
and directing their thought and conduct. Indeed such a combination 
seems to be one of the essential marks of the greatest teachers, like 
Socrates, Jesus, Buddha, and Pestalozzi. 

Thirdly, the_ teacher should be well versed in the technique of the 
profession and in those sciences that underlie her methods and materials. 

41 



42 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

An intimate knowledge of the laws of the mental life and of child growth 
are as essential to the teacher as are physics to the engineer and physiology 
to the physician. A thorough discipline in ethics, so far as practicable, 
should be required. It should be a foregone conclusion that she can 
safely shape and direct the moral ideas of her pupils only if she is an 
expert herself in ethical thinking. 

Lastly, she needs ripened insight and wide outlook. She should come 
to see in clear perspective the entire progressive course in moral educa- 
tion, whatever that proves to be or what her speci'al part is in the entire 
program. The true objective of character training should stand out 
in her thought as vividly as do facts of geography or rules of grammar, 
so that they may temper the spirit and method of everything she does. 
The teacher is becoming more and more a specialist, centering all her 
ingenuity upon one particular task. Breadth of view should keep pace 
with the degree of specialization. Unless she sees the entire curriculum, 
sympathizes with the end and purpose of it all and appreciates the lines 
of continuity running through the whole, her devices are too likely 
to prove petty schemes that destroy rather than build up. Her work in 
relation to others might well be like that of an athlete in a game or an 
artist in an orchestra with every act throbbing in sympathy with the com- 
mon purpose. 

3. The Duty of Colleges of Education and Normal Schools. — It must 
be acknowledged that the effort spent among institutions for the prepara- 
tion of, teachers, in inculcating skills and in clarifying the thought 
about the mechanics of culture is quite out of proportion to the ingenuity 
exercised in matters bearing directly and indirectly upon the humanizing 
and moralizing of boys and girls. Little time is employed with the 
arts. Child study as a science languishes and practical ethics is at a 
minimum. Character training hardly appears in the schedule of courses. 
Let none defend this situation on the ground that everything in the 
curriculum when rightly taught is food for moral education. Although 
moral lessons should never appear among the Elementary School subjects 
we have been able to show that the cultivation of character traits has 
a technique as definite as that of any phase of education. It is sadly 
true that the character training ends of school work, while universally 
recognized as of first importance, are the ones habitually lost to view 
in the rush after the acquisition of information. It is to be hoped that 
training-schools for teachers will give first place to courses in character 
training. To keep prospective teachers sensitive to this aspect of education 
is the surest means of vitalizing the school activities throughout. 



CHAPTER XI 

COOPERATING AGENCIES 

1. The home. — Well-bred and well-nurtured children, i.e., good animals, 
are a contribution of first importance. The character possibilities of the 
school are limited by these. The sharing of home life, its privileges and 
responsibilities, is a sort of "first step" in the way of larger social life 
whose gateway is through the school. The home is the earliest, and the 
most impressive school of character. Disharmony between home and 
school is obstructive of moral growth. The home, the school, adult citizen- 
ship, are successive stages in the soul's experience and development. The 
sympathy, friendliness, and helpfulness of the home gain in range and 
definition in school and later social life. The home, with a more intel- 
ligent grasp both of its own function and of the purpose of the school, 
in co-operation with the school, has large moral possibilities. 

2. Parent-Teacher Organisation. — The home and school, the parent 
and teacher, center about the child. Their meaning and being are in him. 
Each has its function in his development. Neither can do its part best by 
itself. The parent can profit by the teacher's insight into the principles 
of physical and mental health. Nutrition, rest, and exercise may be 
understood in their moral significance as well. The teacher, in turn, can 
better accomplish her mission by sharing the parent's more intimate 
knowledge of the habits, disposition, and needs of the child. Mutual 
sympathy and co-operation between home and school yield in the child 
a consciousness of community, of social unity, of purpose and solidarity, 
morally significant. Such relationship mediated and deepened through 
the Parent-Teacher Association invests education with purposefulness, 
and creates in the child a sense of social expectation and a desire to 
measure up to it. It centers adult life upon the child ; it creates a com- 
munity consciousness and betters conditions for the making of citizens. 
Similar ends between church and school would be served by the proposed 
Church-Parent-Teacher Association. 

3. The Church. — The church has ever stood as the conserver and 
quickener of moral life. Man as a spirit, the absolute worth of the good 
life, participation in a larger life through faith, worship, works, and 
love, are some of its great pronouncements. Its prophetic demand for 
personal and social righteousness has been morally impressive. The mes- 
sage of the church will be found in the background of causes that have 
given rise to the present demand for moral training in our schools. 

The Church is because of a great moral personality. The building 
itself stands to the youth of the community as a testimony to unseen 
realities, to moral and spiritual values. Respect for facts as taught in 
the school is deepened by the church in the teaching of reverence for 
values. The democracy sought in the school is re-enforced by the church 
in the fellowship of its worship, in its appeal to sacrificial living, and 
in the enthusiasm engendered in common in behalf of inspiring ideals. The 
social values of the school are supplemented by the activities of young 
people's organizations in the church where the emphasis is more ex- 
plicitly moral and religious. 

4. The Church School.— Its ideal is the intelligent nurture of the 
church and its adherents in Christian citizenship. In practice, however, 
its constituency consists largely of the boys and girls of the public school. 

Its function is instruction and training in social righteousness of such 
character as to qualify for efficient and happy membership in the Christian 
community. The motive whether moral or religious is social and practical. 

43 



44 CHARACTER EDUCATION METHODS 

Its method is psychological and situational, i.e., interests are a func- 
tion of instinct and environment. Needs vary with growth. Nurture is 
determined by need. Material is graded according to growth. It employs, 
too, the laboratory method. Learning by doing, impression by expression, 
knowing the doctrine by doing the will, are statements of it. 

As to its curriculum content, experience with persons in actual life 
relationships is of primary importance. The method is participation 
much more than proclamation. The content is living epistles rather than 
a traditional doctrine. Love, mercy, and truth are first incarnate. Pic- 
tures, stories, plays, history, literature, biography, and the Bible, as 
study material have a meaning and value only as interpreted in terms of 
personal experience. Love of the unseen is mediated through the seen. 
The Bible to reveal its moral and religious worth with its stories for 
childhood, its friendships and heroisms for youth, and its wisdom for 
mature minds, must be retranslated, so far as possible, into the actual 
social experience of persons such as we. 

Growth means increasing capacity to share satisfactorily in increas- 
ingly complex social relationships. Moral development means increasing 
capacity for fulness of participation in social life rather than an intel- 
lectual acquaintance with the so-called moral virtues. 

5. The Community. — The principle of community is native to man. 
Community is a spirit first, an area afterward. It is a state of mind, 
a socialized will, a mode of life, a steadfast fellowship in "singleness of 
heart." Love is its essence. 

Community finds its best cultivation and expression in the true family 
where the good of each is the common good. Love pursues the good of 
the whole. The community motived by love is the family extended. 
"Love thy neighbor as thyself." So interpreted the cultivation of the 
religious life is one of the best means for the nurture of the community 
impulse in the child. Then, too, the actual practice of community in any 
form of neighborhood cooperation develops the spirit of community. 
Pride in neighborhood cleanliness (physical or moral), community play- 
grounds, social centers, consolidated schools, and community churches, are 
all practical expressions of it. When the whole school enterprise is seen 
as a public utility, as socially motived, owned, and administered, it 
becomes to the boy his very own. He becomes its guardian, and is loyal 
thereto. The school cannot do this by itself. 

The spirit of community could be furthered in our young by more 
actual participation on the part of the public in the life of the school 
and its associated interests. Commencement could be invested with a 
social significance as marking a stage in citizenship. Armistice Day, 
Lincoln's and Washington's Birthdays, among others, offer opportunity 
for public participation in and emphasis upon the principles of citizenship. 

6. Less Formal Agencies. — The press is our national educator. It is 
a power for good or evil. As a chronicler of human vices, it dulls and 
may destroy moral perceptions and sensibilities. As a preacher of right- 
eousness, standing squarely for the right on all moral issues, it creates 
an atmosphere, a community standard, that grows in impressiveness and 
inviolability. In its interest in the school and in school events it builds 
for itself a constituency in the formation of whose ideals and values 
it exercises a determining influence. 

The Public Library is a public utility. The child, the youth, the 
adult, are its patrons. It cooperates with the school in the story-hour for 
the little ones, and in selecting and providing selected readings and refer- 
ences for the older children. Through it a carefully chosen literature 
is provided and made readily accessible. In cultivating a taste for reading, 
in providing good literature for the leisure hours of school pupils and 
for working boys and girls, it makes contribution to moral character. 



COOPERATING AGENCIES 45 

The movie has ten million patrons daily. In influence it is becoming 
a competitor of the school and the press. It appeals to the dramatic im- 
pulses. It arrests and holds attention, gives suggestions and stirs imagina- 
tion. Suggestion is more powerful in periods of relaxation. The suscepti- 
bility of the movie audience necessitates for moral ends some sort of 
supervision of films. It may become a powerful ally of moral education. 
It has already made important contributions in its special educational 
films. The public school is providing itself with this equipment. 

The Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls are typical organizations of 
major moral significance. In their appeal to adventure and romance, to 
comradeship and loyalty, to freedom and cooperative activity, to initiative, 
self-reliance, and self-expression, their moral possibilities are very great. 
They make for citizenship through practical serviceable living in both home 
and community. They invest the adolescent boy and girl, otherwise a 
nondescript element in our life, with rights and duties and transform 
them into the junior citizenship of the nation. In that they supply worthy 
forms of recreational activity during leisure these and such organizations 
have great moral possibilities. They may properly be regarded as a sort 
of informal continuation school. 



CHAPTER XII 

CONCLUSION 

We have spoken hitherto of projects. There is just one project — 
the most challenging of all. It is that of the culture of humanity through 
childhood. It is an old story in the saying of it, that all this work of 
education, this striving, this aspiring, are elements in the process of human 
self-realization. But it is novir a project, as concrete and definite as 
any that are set for boy or girl in the school. To carry it through to 
final completion will take the combined effort of educators working 
through many years. The ends to be attained are becoming clean-cut 
in their definition. The ways leading thereto are opening up. They run 
through schools, and homes and communities and pass through the muscles 
and hearts as well as thoughts of active children, doing meaningful 
things together. We can see many of the specific activities with which 
children may be well occupied. 

The task of character research is to try out under controlled conditions 
the various projects and methods that have distinct moral value and to 
discover others. It must study, work, and build until every teacher in 
America is clearly conscious of the entire program of which she is a 
part and exactly the meaning of what she is domg in the furthering of 
the collective plan. 

There is little danger that ever again, with the start we have made, 
the end and means should be sought in a set "system" or imprisoned 
in a fixed "curriculum." The ends are personal, social and ideal. The 
methods to be used are such as will foster the purposeful, thoughtful, 
and creative activities of pupils. These truths will hardly be shaken. 

The project herein outlined, we trust, is clearheaded and business- 
like. It is finding ways of checking up step by step its methods and 
progress. It is discovering how to make the self-realization of each 
and every pupil a community endeavor in which parents, churches, and 
all agencies concerned shall concentrate their efiforts. It takes individuals 
singly and severally instead of collectively and generally. It sees already 
how to estimate within reasonable limits the finished product so that 
when the school turns out from the "people's college" young men and 
women with a certificate of "good moral character," that testimony 
shall have one hundred per cent of truth in its statement. 

The project is a national one. Too long has America contented herself 
with merely preaching the gospel of democracy to her youth. She must 
now instill the spirit of democracy into the inner parts of her boys and 
girls by giving them years of practice in democracy. 

While the project looms large as an appealing program it is also 
simple. The teacher who wishes to do so can begin forthwith. If she is 
able to have at hand some such first aid as the chart suggested in Chapter 
VII, along with a bibliography and available materials, she can immediately 
begin to vitalize the work of her pupils. She may well keep in touch 
with an organization like the Character Education Institution of Wash- 
ington, D. C. This and similar organizations exist for the sake of keeping 
teachers in touch with right methods and new materials. Her knowledge 
will grow with the doing until she in turn is an active unit in the 
combined endeavor. 



46 



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